


flying home

by naijagirl101



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Anxiety Disorder, Character Study, Coming of Age, Designation: Miracle AU, F/M, Family Feels, M/M, Not Beta Read, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-23
Updated: 2021-02-27
Packaged: 2021-03-14 22:15:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 23,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28927905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/naijagirl101/pseuds/naijagirl101
Summary: In the chaos of washing off the afterbirth, it takes a few minutes for everyone in the room to realize the bouncing baby boy is normal in every way but one.
Relationships: Akashi Seijuurou/Furihata Kouki
Comments: 8
Kudos: 84





	1. distance

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [You Could Never Wear My Crown (Cause It Weighs Too Much)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6071449) by [umisabaku](https://archiveofourown.org/users/umisabaku/pseuds/umisabaku). 



Furihata Kōki is born on a mildly sunny Tuesday to a bit of fanfare as the second child of a happily mated couple. Kiyoko, his mother, is personally surprised at how  _ easy  _ the pregnancy has been to-date. No morning sickness to speak of (unnatural cravings for  _ natto _ aside), normal aches in her hips and back but nothing she couldn’t handle, and less than four hours in labor.

A weedy shaking cry, less of an announcement of his arrival and more of a reaction to being somewhere new, that dwindles down into hiccups.

He has all ten fingers, all ten toes. He has gummy brown eyes, noted by the nurse in the first ten minutes of checking him over, and no brows to speak of. Despite being one of the quieter babies the health team has encountered, his first cry makes it clear he’s got a good set of lungs on him and functioning mobility in the way he flails that most newborns do. 

In the chaos of washing off the afterbirth, it takes a few minutes for everyone in the room to realize the bouncing baby boy is normal in every way but one.

The attending nurse that first notices squeaks loudly enough to scare the other two nurses and have Furihata Kousuke whip around to see what might be wrong with his second son.  _ His hair, look at his hair _ is just about all the nurse can get out before the adults in the room (minus an exhausted and somewhat out-of-it Kiyoko) zero in on the cause for fuss.

It’s the oddest thing.

A cap of cherry pink fuzz, soft as down, ridiculously bright and garish. 

It is...the  _ oddest _ thing.

“Well,” said Kosuke in the driest voice he could muster up, “that can’t possibly be natural, can it?”

“Oh my,” says the nurse who first lost his cool.

“It has to be,” murmurs the other nurse in awe, “it’s either the hair or the eyes at birth and his eyes were brown.”

“Foreign in-laws in your future,” jokes the midwife with a relieved laugh, “although I didn’t think anyone on earth could be born with that shade of hair.”

By the time Kiyoko has pulled it together enough to inquire as to why everyone is whispering furiously over in the section of the room meant to quickly wash babies post-birth, her husband and her health professionals have mostly -  _ kind of  _ regained some sense of equilibrium and are moving once more. Finally, they bring Kiyoko her second son - freshly dried and fairly quietly content.

She immediately takes one look at her child’s head, swings her head up slowly to look at her husband in shock, then looks back down to the baby in her arms.

“Dearest husband,” she says in a strangled voice, “you don’t happen to have any pink-haired family members I haven’t met yet, do you?”

“Nope,” he says thoughtfully, looking down at the two of them. “You?”

Kiyoko and Kosuke stare at each other for a minute before slowly, incredibly, they start to laugh. It bubbles up from their bellies until they are both hooting. It’s a warm, happy sound. A warm, happy couple - and the baby with pink hair that’s fallen asleep between them. 

Beyond the laughter, the notetaking in tiny Furihata Kōki’s medical file resumes with a single line.

**_Soulmate Distinction: Present_ **

**_Feature: Hair_ **

**_Notes: Appears to be a bright pinkish red_ **

. . . . ****

The first few months of Kōki’s life are fairly peaceful. Furihata Kyo is a good big brother, once he gets over the fact that there’s a real live baby that cries in his house. He thinks the pink hair is  _ cool _ and says as much to his parents, his teacher at daycare, his friends on the playground, and his baby brother himself. ****

“Super cool,” he takes to whispering whenever he holds Kōki. 

Also, his brother is actually pretty cute. Definitely cuter than Satoshi-kun’s little sister and waaaaaay cuter than the triplets next door. And now he knows that Kōki is actually a  _ quiet  _ baby because he and Satoshi had to turn down the volume on their video games every half hour because his sister was “sensitive to noise”.

Kōki’s not sensitive to  _ anything _ . And he sleeps a lot! So Kyo gets to hold him all the time, whenever he wants. Which is cool because Satoshi’s little sister basically cried forever when Satoshi tried yesterday. Super annoying.

His hair changes colors - all the pink started falling out in patches (“Oka, something’s wrong with Kou!”) but his parents said that’s normal and that happens to some babies who come into the world with hair that’s not really theirs. It makes Kōki look like an alien baby with candy-colored cat print. And it means really rude strangers talk to them sometimes but...Kaa-chan's made every single stranger cry so far. She’s  _ awesome _ . 

And so is Kōki. 

. . . .

It’s a marvel watching their kids grow.

Who’d have thought the match for the thinly inked  _ momo _ on the inside of her left ankle would have been a poet? Kiyoko knows she lucked out - Kosuke couldn’t help  _ but  _ scribble snatches of books and songs on his arms when they were growing up. He had taken to writing information about himself early on even though every parent and every teacher ever said that was dangerous. So she knew his name was Kosuke and she knew he lived in Miyagi and she knew he was an only child. She knew a lot more than everybody else seemed to know about their soulmates. Because once he started, he never really stopped. She’d had to start wearing long-sleeves in fourth grade, for crying out loud. And even though she never wrote back because she wasn’t  _ stupid _ and she just knew that her mother would somehow know if she’d written too much, she drew a smiley face a few times a week and smudged some of his stupider writing. Just, you know, so he would know that she was alive somewhere. 

But then he’d gotten  _ worse _ . Every morning the summer after fourth grade she would wake up to at least one fresh line of prose in this terrible handwriting that she could barely decipher (he’d never grown out of his penmanship, believe it or not). It was confusing because at this point she could begin to feel a tiny bit of his moods and emotions - they were never focused and he went between ‘content’ and something else she now recognizes as his ‘airhead I’m not thinking about anything’ mood. The other girls in cramming school had ooh’ed and aah’ed and she’d gotten progressively more and more irritated before one morning she yanked her right sleeve up and wrote in all caps “PLEASE STOP WRITING ON YOURSELF, I DON”T LIKE IT”.

Ah, how far they’ve come.

Fourteen years, two toddlers, and twins on the way to boot. 

Her eldest is a combination of the brightest and loudest parts of her and Kosuke. Cute (how could he  _ not _ be, with his dad’s closed-eye grin), charming when he wants to be, talkative, outgoing. Determined to get into everything and anything. And, at the moment, hell-bent on getting his little brother good enough to play a card game.

“Okay listen, the way this works is you lay these  _ cards _ down like so,” he’s saying really confidently. Which he should because she  _ and  _ her husband had spent the last two weeks teaching him  _ Hawaiian-style Koi-Koi  _ since he’d played it once at cousin Sacchi’s place and was obsessed. “Because some of these get to be face-up, which means we can all see them right? And then these ones over here have to face down because we don’t get to play them yet.”

Kōki, her quiet ray of sunshine, is nodding his three-year-old head as if he gets it. She’s not actually sure that he does but no doubt Kyo won’t rest until he does. Probably.

It’s fine. They’re waiting for Kosuke to come back from the grocery store because moving is way beyond her this late in the day and they wanted to surprise the boys with a cake when they let them know babies were on the way. Kyo will be excited but she’s not sure about Kōki.

Kōki, who is a carbon copy of her father-in-law Hiroshi - who remains  _ tickled _ that he’s got a tiny twin grandson. He’s got the same thinking face that his grandfather does, down to the slight nose wrinkle and the arched brow. It’s  _ adorable _ when the two of them are in the same room.

“Okay, so then I don’t show you these ones?” he asks, brow furrowing. How are her kids so  _ cute _ ? Goodness gracious. “Nii-san, if the shape is the same, then I take it?”

“Yep. But if it doesn’t, then you…”

It’s not like she’s worried that he won’t want to be a big brother. It’s more like Kōki sometimes doesn’t tell the rest of them when he’s worried about something, not even his brother. So if he  _ is  _ worried about more siblings, she might not know until a few days later.

“...m’okay.” Such a serious little face on her second kid, copying Kyo’s movements with the cards. “Okay, let me try, Nii-san.” 

_ Maa, maa.  _ She leans back against the couch.  _ It’s fine. _

There’ll be  _ cake _ . And even if she misses something, her soulmate will catch it. 

. . . .

Furihata Kōki is four and a half years old (and he can count those on his fingers!) before he really figures out soulmates are real. It’s by accident, kind of, because he’s playing with Tohru-chan and Himawari-chan and somewhere between throwing the white ball to the fence and running after it Himawari stops moving.

“Hima-chan?” He stops too. “What’s wrong?”

She’s fussing with her sleeves. “My arm’s all tingly, I have to stop and scratch it.”

That makes sense. Tohru keeps running to get the ball and probably come back. Hima-chan is kind of clumsy though so Kōki helps by holding her hat while she finally pulls up one of them. And then-

-”whoooaaaaa-” sparkly and kind of green but like  _ not _ shiny, “what  _ is _ that?”

She looks half scared and half excited. “I didn’t draw that, Kou-kun!”

“You  _ didn’t _ ?”

Then...who-

Tohru comes back just in time to see the tree grow more leaves. Like magic. And when she yells it brings half the class and their teacher running. It’s an exciting ten minutes where he’s staring at Hima’s arm as the tree continues to get bigger and the teacher is speaking very loudly and the rest of the class is kind of pushy and shovey to try and see what all the fuss is about.

It’s  _ very _ exciting.

. . . .

His first two years at Renkōji Shōgakkō are pretty normal. He has his best friends Fuku-kun and Hima-chan in his class. With a semi-famous poet for a father, he’s good at Literature without trying and decent at History and English. He tries soccer because oni-san seems to like it, kicking the ball around with Fuku-kun and some other boys but he falls a lot. After the fifth scraped knee, he decides it’s not for him.

He gets to go to three of his dad’s book signing events all the way in Kyoto and he watches his mom on Saturdays sometimes when she sketches out designs for her firm’s commercial building projects. Kyo teaches him a bunch of card games when he’s not out with his big group of friends (or writing on his arm because he’s allowed to talk to his soulmate now), and Katsumi and Kaori con him into endless teatimes and imaginary cops-and-robbers games. 

Hima-chan’s soulmate seems to be really bad at following the rules and really good at drawing. Everyone knows you’re not supposed to use skin matches to talk before elementary but they never really stopped.

“They’re probably older,” he says one day, chin in his hand while she examines the latest drawing of what has to be a whale. It’s not that big and she says she woke up with this one so she already knew to wear long-sleeves today. 

“Probably.”

“Or maybe,” Fuku-kun chimes in loudly, “maybe they’re just really good at art the same way Furi’s really good at Literature.”

“That’s true. Do you like it?”

Hima grins. “I know I’m not really supposed to but I told them I liked the sea. So they’ve been drawing sea animals lately. And they always feel very excited when they draw them.”

She looks happy. Even though the rules about skin twin drawing are pretty serious - if she gets caught, the teacher will make her go to the nurse’s office to erase it and get a permanent ink stamp on the back of her hand that tells the whole world she broke the rule. But at least she’s happy. And her soulmate is breaking the rule with drawings that she  _ likes. _

He’s never gotten anything from his soulmate (words or drawings or feelings in his head) and he’s not really brave enough to break the rule himself. He doesn’t even really think about soulmates as much as other kids might but it’s not like he  _ never  _ thinks about it. After all, his soulmate has  _ bright pink hair  _ which probably means they’re not even in Japan. 

Or at least that’s what Tou-chan thinks. 

. . . .

He forgets all about having a soulmate for long stretches of time and gets almost all the way to Elementary 5 until-

-the world explodes into chaos.

One day, everything’s normal and it’s June and he’s trying to get over the fact that Hima-chan’s family up and moved to Norway when the three of them were planning the entirety of their junior high lives. 

The next day everything breaks under the wave that is news of the Miracles.

Experiments. 

Secret labs. 

Kids with superpowers. 

And conspiracy theories everywhere he turns that guess at a plot to overthrow Japan. It’s-

_ -it’s terrible.  _

No one told him living in a comic book plot would be this scary. It’s like his house isn’t a home for at least a few weeks - Kaasan and Tou-san are glued to the television at any given moment, schools close down, and everyone’s scared about everything. Every single thing. He calls Fuku every day or Fuku calls him - and he calls Hima-chan at least once every few days. The twins end up in his and Kyo’s room most nights and they fall asleep in different formations of tangled limbs. His parents hug them more than they used to. 

He doesn’t know what to do in the impromptu lockdown so he reads. He works his way through his father’s library. He’s read all of his father’s poetry, even the stuff that goes over his head a little, and he works his way through classic Japanese literature. Life is too scary for him to stomach more than one serious novel in a row so he diversifies his material. Buys digital versions of translated American and European classics. He reads aloud to Katsumi because she likes the sound of his voice and he borrows manga from Kaori because she’s the twin most into shounen-ai. 

By the end of the second month of that awful summer, he’s plowed his way through nearly 60 books. Almost two books a day, on average. 

If he reads, he can look away. 

If he reads, he can drown it - all of it - out.

If he reads, he can  _ escape _ .

. . . .

The supermarket is where everyone in the neighborhood socializes now. Or so he hears from Kyo. He doesn’t really want to leave the house if he doesn’t have to and no one makes him.

Talk shows bring on expert after expert, and a few politicians to grill for information. The conspiracy theories are dying down but the news has gotten a hold of a single grainy photo of the...the children, right, and while it’s hard to make out a lot bc their faces are blurred out one thing that’s clear is that they’ve not been held in the best conditions.

The uproar over experimenting on human children grows until it’s super clear to him that the adults are going to have to find whoever’s responsible. Talk shows bring on experts and the military to try and get anything. 

“As they should,” Kaa-san says angrily, “who experiments on children?”

_ Monsters, _ he supposes.  _ Monsters experiment on children. _

But all the stuff about the kids being monsters themselves doesn’t go away at all. No one has a lot of ideas about what they look like or how old they are but for as long as Kōki lives, he’ll never forget the day that the military comes clean about them. That there are seven of them, six boys and one girl. That they are all around Kōki’s age. That their powers are real.

Telekinesis.

Shapeshifting.

Hypnosis.

Invisibility.

The world slides back into chaos.

. . . .

A month later, Kaa-san’s firm opens back up and she comes home looking stressed almost every day. Sometimes he can hear her and Tou-san up late walking but their voices are so low he can’t really make out anything. He stays up at night, long after his siblings go to sleep, and thinks about the kind of evil that would be okay with cooking kids up in a lab. Everyone is moved up into the next class like normal, like the country didn’t go up in flames right before the start of summer break. It’s not as comforting as the government thinks it is but there’s nothing they can do, he guesses.

Kyo finds him hyperventilating, grey spots covering up what he can see, the morning that they’re supposed to go back to school. It’s really hard to try and describe what’s happening but his big brother yells for their parents.

“A panic attack,” says the doctor over the phone. 

His mother and father unanimously decide to send him right back to bed and give his siblings the option to stay or to go. He’s too breathless to speak up but all three of them decide to stay too. Kyo, Kagame, and Kaori build an American-style blanket fort and curl up around him. It helps.

The next day, he straightens his spine and he puts on his navy blue school uniform on the second day, drags his backpack unto his shoulders, takes one step out of their home-

-and it’s like getting hit over the head with how vast the world is, how tiny he is, how easily he can disappear, how much in it he doesn’t know and can’t protect himself and his family from but-

- _ there’s nothing I can do- _

_ -nowhere to run _ -

“Onii-ch-”

-and this isn’t anything he can control and he can’t  _ breathe- _

“Onii-chan! Okan, Okan!”

This time, he resurfaces curled into a ball on the ground with his head in his mother’s lap. Katsumi is weeping over Kaa-chan’s shoulder and Kaori looks frozen next to her.  _ This,  _ he thinks shakily,  _ might be a problem. _

. . . .

They should have made him leave the house.

“How did we miss this?” his wife cries a week later, and Kosuke has to admit that it stings. The recrimination in his head is both of theirs - hers has this edge of desperation that signifies that she is on the edge of terror. He, however, is not terrified. His desperation is tinged with anger.

She’s right. Somehow, in the panic and the chaos of a country trying to figure out what to do with human proof of scientists with no moral code and finding that had to come from  _ somewhere _ they’d missed the fact that their middle child had stopped leaving the house altogether. 

Of all his children, Kōki has always been the one most fragile. 

Or, rather, the most open. 

Sometimes, he looks at his amazing son and sees every version of him he and Kiyoko got to raise - the baby that smiled a lot but rarely laughed or cried, the curious two-year old who’d been content to color on the floor under his desk, the four year-old who brought him leaves and rocks for inspiration, the shaking seven year-old who stood up to a playground meanie for his little sisters and only wept when he and they were safe and back home - and he wants to wrap him up and bundle him away. 

Just.

Wrap him up. Hide him away.

“Who’s to say he wouldn’t have developed panic attacks sooner, if we’d made him?” he finally says. 

“But we didn’t notice!”

And, it’s true - after today’s panic attack, they’d realized it wasn’t a fluke. They’d also realized that they had no idea how to begin understanding why it was happening and how they could help Kōki manage and eventually overcome it. Not to speak of the rest of their children - Kaori has looked a hair's breadth away from devolving into one herself most days, Katsumi is distraught that she can’t help, and Kyo has been uncharacteristically taciturn. 

Jesus Christ, his family is disintegrating before his eyes under the strain of this strange new world.

_ Absolutely not,  _ he swears. 

“We didn’t,” he murmurs, pulling Kiyoko into his arms because it helps. Because she needs it. And he needs it too. “And we can dissect all the things we should have done and didn’t do but it doesn’t change the fact that we’re here now and we have to figure out where to go from here.” 

He can feel the moment her emotions crystallize into something thin and brittle. The moment they break. They’ve always taken turns in the hard moments of building their lives together (“You can’t cry if I’m crying,” she’d said reasonably in the first month of dating, “you have to promise.”) so he boxes up his own feelings as best he can.

And he spends the next few hours trying to come up with a way to save his family.

. . . .

Therapy helps. Otou’s publicist refers them to Dr. Miyagi two weeks after his first panic attack and he calls him twice a week that first week. The next week, Kōki struggles to get out of the house but he  _ does _ \- sweaty and scared but still conscious - to see Dr. Miyago in person. Dr. Miyagi is short and bald but somehow being bald makes him less threatening? Plus he doesn’t talk over Kōki and makes eye contact with him and never once seems to reach for a pen or paper. 

Talking to his siblings helps too, even though they can’t always understand it.

“It’s like...when I’m in the house, the world is far away,” he tries explaining in the blanket fort, under cover of darkness. “It doesn’t have anything to do with me, with us. But when I go outside, the world is overwhelming because it’s too close. Everything is too close or too loud or too bright. Kind of.”

Somebody - Katsumi, probably - reaches out to take his hand.

“Is there something in particular that...triggers that feeling?” asks Kyo from the other end of their combined bed pallets. “Like a sound or a color?”

He doesn’t think so. It's kind of like the entire outside world stresses him out. As a whole, actually. He says as much. When the silence stretches out, he closes his eyes.

“I’m sorry.”

He  _ is  _ sorry. He hates worrying them. He hates the pinched look on his mother’s face and he hates how sad his father looks sometimes when he doesn’t think Kōki can see him watching and he hates that he can’t really figure out why he’s so scared. The world was always big but it’s like this summer made ‘big’ equal ‘terrifying’ in his head. And it sucks that he can’t think past that when he first leaves his house, like the terror just kind of swells in his head and he can’t always breathe. 

“It’s not your fault, Otōto.” Kyo’s voice is firm, unwavering. You can’t argue with him when he sounds like that. “If anything, it’s the Miracles and the scientists and all this crazy scary shit happening in the country.”

“Niisan is right-” Kaori whispers fiercely.

“-it’s no one’s fault,” finishes Katsumi.

“Don’t miss out on school because of me,” he sighs. It’s already the second week of September and his siblings have stayed home the full week with him with their parents’ blessing. He’d never thought he’d see the day that their mother and father would let them skip school but, then again, no one had ever seen the day that superhero kids would be real either. “You should go back. I’ll be okay.” 

His siblings get quiet for a long time after that. 

Eventually, there’s a shuffling sound, and then his big brother’s hand is ruffling his hair, just like he used to when Kōki was way younger.

“None of you worry about  _ anything _ \- Kōki, you just worry about getting better. I’ll talk with Tou-san and Kaa-san. It’ll be fine.”

_ It’ll be fine, _ Kōki repeats to himself. It has to be.

. . . .

When he returns to school mid-way through October, it’s the most well-known he’s ever been in his life. And he does not like it. The rumours about him are pointed. And sometimes mean. He has a mild anxiety attack in the boy’s bathroom between classes on his third day but he’s got “coping mechanisms'' now, thanks to the internet and Dr. Miyagi. And he has Fuku, who is in his class once again, and knows him almost as well as his siblings and has gotten scarily good at intercepting any attention that he garners in 1-B. 

What’s surprising, actually, is the soulmate thing. It feels like half the school has developed accelerated bonding traits - half of his homeroom can sense what their soulmate feels (at least generally) and it seems like at least a quarter of the student body actually feel their partner’s emotions so strongly that the school has brought on a specialist counselor to help students learn to separate out their own emotions from their mate’s. Lots and lots of studies are probably being launched as to why but past research basically says that intense emotion (and, hey, they’ve had an intense set of months) pushes up the timeline.

It’s weird because on a scale of ‘things he cares about’ and ‘things he doesn’t’, the soulmate thing had rated as ‘doesn’t’. And it still fits there. Probably why he’s so surprised that the horrifying national events have touched his classmates in that way.

“Are you feeling anything?” he asks his best friend one day when they’re walking home from school.

“Ehhhh, sometimes.” 

“Oh, wow. What...does it feel like?”

Fuku scratches his ear thoughtfully. “I can tell what’s mine and what’s theirs so it feels like my own feelings get interrupted, kind of? Like I’m still feeling what I’m feeling but suddenly there’s this overlay on top. If they’re sleepy and I’m happy, then I feel mostly happy and think about naps.”

It all sounds kind of cool. But kind of far removed from what he's thinking about every day.

Anyway, he spends all his free time trying to catch up on the first half that he hadn’t gotten to at home. Plus the new stuff. The only classes he can pass with his eyes closed are Literature, Biology, and History. Everything else means he’s working during all of his breaks in the day, and he’s excused from sports for the first two weeks so he uses that time too. They take a break the first weekend of November to celebrate his birthday but that’s about the only time he’s not buried in homework.

At least homework is a good distraction - which is lucky because the class gets tired of asking him why he hasn’t been to school just around the time that the news shares that the scientists, private paramilitary organizations, and business people involved with  _ funding _ the whole Miracles thing are going on trial.

He doesn’t watch any of the trials, though the rest of his family does - and they give him the bare details when he asks. So does Fuku. It sounds as terrible as he imagines. Monsters being monsters in the name of science. Or progress. Or pride in being Japanese and strong or whatever other terrible reasons these people have for hurting others. 

It’s a sad strange way to go into the holidays.

. . . .

The entire house wakes up to Katsumi’s excited yelling one Sunday morning. It just about gives Kōki a heart attack, at first, until he’s fully awake and processing that the screaming sounds  _ excited  _ and not scared. He struggles out of bed and stumbles down the hallway to see what all the fuss is about. 

“Look!” she shouts, waving her right arm in the air where there is a-

“...puppy?” their mother asks doubtfully. 

“Looks more like a rabbit to me,” he hums thoughtfully.

“I tried to tell her that it’s a turtle because look at that weird pattern up top,” Kaori makes a face that just screams _unimpressed_ , “but honestly, I can kind of see the ‘rabbit’ now.”

There’s a beat of silence before Tou-san just  _ bursts _ into the loudest most ridiculous laugh ever. And then everybody’s a goner - Sumi is pouting while every single one of them crack up. 

“Okay, okay, oh my God,” she shouts over all of them doubled over, “so my soulmate isn't an artist like you or Kaa-san, sue them it’s fine.”

That sets their father off again and it’s a long five minutes before they can pull it together enough to congratulate her on her first skin ink. When they slip out altogether, he has the passing thought that it's’ just him and Kaori left now. It doesn’t bother him as much as it should.

. . . .

_ What am I so scared of? _ It’s a question he asks himself after sessions with Dr. Miyago. At first, the question had sounded pleading in his head. Then it sounded angry. Sometimes it still does. 

Mild anxiety means he’s a little bit scared all the time. About being around other people, for sure, but also about doing things or saying things sometimes. The big stuff is what prompts full-on fall-to-the-floor attacks but he doesn’t even really understand why the big stuff feels so big to him.

So he asks himself this question because he’s getting that knowing himself is probably gonna help in the long-run. In life. And in managing how he feels and how  _ much  _ he feels.

_ What am I so scared of? _ Is it death? Change? The future? 

He hasn’t come up with an answer yet.

. . . .

Her name is Aigasaki Mariko.

She’s new to Tama and new to the school and just in time for the start of second year. She has long brown hair and wears sparkly bows every other day. She makes friends the way Kyo makes friends - like it’s not hard at  _ all _ , like everyone’s interesting enough to be in her orbit. She laughs like there’s a reason to, even with everything going on. Every time she laughs, he can’t help himself - he stops and he stares and then he looks away when he remembers what he’s doing. 

He’s never had a crush before.

He really gets what all the other guys are always talking about now because, seriously, everyone likes her. She’s so  _ likeable _ .

He settles into his feelings nervously. He gazes at her from afar. He usually gets to school a little early and sometimes she gets there around the same time. The first time that happens and she says hello to him  _ and _ knows his name he turns red and his hands start sweating so badly that he ends up not saying anything at all. And then he feels like an idiot for the rest of the morning, his anxiety ratcheting up every hour until it’s almost like the first three weeks after his first panic attack. 

“You okay, dude?” Fuku whispers to him worriedly at lunch. “We need to get out of here?” 

He explains what happened and Fuku just nods understandingly then goes-

“Maybe you could just smile at her at the end of the day today? That way, you’ll be being nice but you don’t have to say anything?”

It’s a good suggestion but there’s no chance to do it. He has a mild anxiety attack as soon as he gets home. Kaori and Katsumi drag him into the living room to watch old movies - as distractions go, it’s a really good one and he’s feeling full of popcorn and less emotionally queasy by the time everybody else gets home from work and classes.

The next day he ends up early again. In a rare turn of events so does Mariko. This time when she says a cheerful good morning at the gate, he manages to smile (although it feels awkward and small he still  _ does _ it) and she grins back and carries on inside.

It feels like an accomplishment.

. . . .

Summer zooms by and winter break comes before he knows it and with it, another update on the Miracles. It’s starting to feel like the military is sticking to dropping distressing updates in the summer and the fall on purpose. Why, he doesn’t know, but he starts ignoring all but the most basic news headlines.

_ “Miracles coming to a school near you” _

_ “Social integration: Japan’s Plan to School Experiment Survivors” _

He gets the gist. 

It’s all anyone can talk about leading up to exams. Rumors fly about where exactly in Japan they’ll end up, what they look like, what they sound like, how they’ll act. There’s a general uproar from parents across the country who are concerned that their kids might be going to school with kids who could kill them as soon as look at them and there’s a super long document online that kind of walks everyone through how it’s supposed to work.

Dr. Miyagi asks him how it makes him feel and he doesn’t have an answer. 

He focuses on acing exams. He tries to ignore as much of the news as he can but it’s hard. At least, it’s not sad news. It’s... _news_ news. And based on what Kyo’s said about the education system (“No way are they going to make these kids start until next year, dude”) and the general public sentiment, it’s all far out. And probably none of these kids will be in Tama. 

He ups his breathing exercises - his anxiety swells to unbearable levels a few times but he manages. All of his siblings have learned the signs by now and Kyo calls for an impromptu sibling sleepover - which basically just means they’re all going to build a blanket fort in his room and camp out and play games until they fall asleep. It works. 

Life goes on.

. . . .

“Do you worry about your soulmate?” Kaori asks one day when they’re home alone. Tou’s coming back from his overseas book tour, Kaa-san’s in the office, and he’s got no real idea where their other two siblings are.

They’re the only two who haven’t had skin ink to-date. He thinks about it.

“Not right now.” He thinks about it some more. He thought soulmates were cool when he was younger and Hima-chan was the almost-weekly proof that they were real. “I think that I would have worried a lot more if all the stuff that happened after the Miracles hadn’t happened. Are you worried?”

She gazes at him. “What if we don’t have one, anymore?”

He’s tried not to think about it, actually. He knows his distinction had been the hair color that their parents swear was pink so he’d definitely had one at birth. So had Kaori, whose eyes had been grey. Neither run in their family so they’re part of a very small percentage of Japanese people who have easy to identify distinctions and whose soulmates were already born before them. 

They sit quietly to consider that terrifying conclusion because it’s not impossible. According to the internet, the crude death rate is .01%. Except that news of the Miracles means that  _ more  _ people have accelerated bond factors. The highest since War World Two. It’s...not impossible.

Not only have he and Kaori never had skin ink, neither of them have ever felt anything from their soulmates. 

Ever.

“It’s really really statistically unlikely,” he says seriously, “that two people in the same household who both had distinctions at birth would both lose their soulmates.”

“Yeah,” she says glumly.

“What if you tried writing to them?” he asks her gently. 

“Will you do it with me?” 

“I-”He clocks his lungs trying to move faster and has to count to 5 in his head to breathe past it. “I don’t think I want to. Because I’m older than you and- it might be true for you. I’d rather just assume nothing.”

She gets up off the floor to join him on the couch.

“I shouldn’t have asked.”

“It’s alright.” He squeezes her hand briefly. “Do you want to?”

She does. So she grabs the silver marker on the kitchen table, thinks about it for a second, then writes “hello there” on the inside of her left wrist. 

Luck is on her side. Two hours later, while they’re still watching tv, an English greeting appears in even cursive on the opposite wrist. He’s relieved and grateful for Kaori all in one. 

. . . .

“Should we try out for a club when we get to Seirin in two months?” Fuku interrupts his own potato chip munching during lunch break, and Kōki wrinkles his face as he gets sprayed. 

“Huh?”

“Like soccer or tennis or volleyball.”

He looks at Fuku, who’s strangely hard to read. 

“Do you want to?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, which one?”

“I don’t know yet.”

They snack in silence for a minute and he thinks about the fact that Fuku, who’s always liked sports, had sacrificed their first year of junior high being a good friend and sticking close to Kōki when he was adjusting. It wouldn’t be so bad, probably. He’s spent two years just focused on school and, consequently, has the top score in both Literature and Biology. It would be a change of pace to try sports - even though he’s starting to get nervous just thinking about it.

“I think,” he offers tentatively, “they did end up establishing a bunch of afterschool clubs last year.” 

He’ll try, at least.

. . . .

The air in the auditorium is excited - people are clapping and families are hooting and the scent of the graduation wreaths are a nice addition. He’s so proud of his big brother as he stands in the crowd of families and friends, with his parents and his sisters, clapping harder than he’s ever clapped before in his life. 

Kyo has been the most important person in his life for as long as he can remember. Most graduation ceremonies are boring until the end but he’s been attentive from the beginning. The best part is when the seniors proceed out of the auditorium. When Kyo walks by, the whole family goes  _ nuts  _ and Kyo’s grin is so big that it takes over his whole face. 

It is, hands down, the best part of the entire year. 

A month later, as he stands at the gates of Seirin Kōkō with Fuku chattering away at his side, he sucks in a bunch of air and tries to be cheerful at the prospect of getting used to school without his brother on the grounds. And the fact that they’re apparently gunning for the basketball club. He accidentally bumps into someone, he looks down into-

_ -eyes a crazy bright blue and hair a lighter shade to match and- _

-Fuku shakes his arm. Asks him if he’s okay, why he’s stopped. He’d thought he’d bumped into something but there isn’t anything below his feet or around them. Weird. He shakes his head and follows his best friend onwards.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My headcanon is this: Kouki actually grows up in a family that is full of an abundance of love. Some of his self-consciousness comes from being a middle child with a really outgoing older brother and twin baby sisters who are way louder than him. The rest of it comes from suffering from social anxiety and being not very popular at school. And being on a team with basketball players who’ve been playing for years whereas he only picked it up that year with Fuku. In my head, he’s actually naturally quiet and observant like canon and he’s less timid off the basketball court because he’s got a kickass familial network.
> 
> anyway, i run on reviews and kudos!


	2. all the while

He has a dream the first night of school.

Two things about that are notable: (a) his anxiety has long meant that he has a tough time falling asleep and staying asleep, even on school nights, and; (b) as a rule, he finds it difficult to remember anything about his dreams. 

Not even impressions. He closes his eyes and then he opens them - whatever happens in between doesn’t stick.

Yet, the morning of his second day in high school, it’s like he’s seeing double for a second - his plain bedroom ceiling is overlaid with the dregs of what his head whipped up last night - an unfamiliar cityscape awash in the colors of a dying sunset. It’s so foreign that it takes him a second to recognize what’s happening, and in the second between fully awake and partially asleep, the afterimage fades until he’s not sure if he imagined it.

But, no. His bedroom blanket is a robin’s egg blue and he thinks to himself _no, that’s a bit too green_ and that’s it. He didn’t make that up. For the first time in his entire existence, he’s remembered enough to know for sure he dreamed of something. But there’s not enough of it left for him to really remember. It bugs him all throughout getting ready, all throughout breakfast - but he can’t recall the specifics of it no matter how hard he tries.

He’s generally not a superstitious person so he tries not to worry about it but, in his book, most change is not necessarily good for him. 

Anxiety really doesn’t do well on disruptions to order.

God, he can feel a bad mood coming on - he can’t afford to show up not at his best at a brand new school with people from all over the city. Besides, he’ll be late to Fuku’s which will make them both late to school. It’s about managing his emotions - he’s good at that now. 

So he squares his shoulders, speedwalks down the four blocks to get his best friend, and is fully present and in the moment (a good coping mechanism, honestly). It’s a walk to the train, then a 20m train ride, and another walk which is honestly the longest commute that both of them have ever had for school. It also provides a solid amount of time to talk about basketball - and to discuss what they’d both researched last night. 

As far as Kōki can tell, there are a _lot_ of schools that play basketball across Japan. He’d had to narrow his search down to just look at Tokyo in the last three years to understand his new high school and the other schools that they might play against. The articles had been far-ranging but helpful - talking about the tournaments that the high school basketball teams would be playing for. He’d fallen asleep before he could get into specifics about talent or rising stars but it’s more than enough for them to debate as they make their way to school.

If Fuku’s serious about this, Kōki’s determined to have the positions and have a rough idea of what they do (if not how they do it) memorized by the end of the week. He’ll let the other guy figure out where to get them game tapes - or if they should just go to games, if that’s faster - and look into which schools are good in Tokyo. They argue a little bit about what positions they’re naturally good at (Kōki doesn’t know enough to have an opinion about himself and Fuku’s pretty determined that at 180cm he’s probably tall enough to be a center if he gets good) and it’s enough to make him forget the way the day had started.

He and Fuku bump into a handful of guys and girls right past the front gates, all of whom are happier to see the two of them than they should be. Probably the high of a new school that’s bigger than their local junior high, and has a whole new set of kids from a bit farther out than Tama. Everyone’s friendly and catching up on how the last month has been and, because they know him, don’t mind that he stays quiet and listening. Samawara-kun even gives him a friendly nudge and says that Fuku had told him all about the two of them promising to try sports this year. 

“Yeah,” he manages to say sheepishly, “I figure it’s a good time to try, you know?”

“Are you set on basketball?”

“I watch it more than soccer and baseball - and I did use to get pulled into it when I was younger and they needed someone extra for teams.”

“Ne, ne, did you guys hear?” interrupts Sayo, with a look on her face that K is both super excited and super shocked. It instantly worries him and he braces himself for her next words. “There’s supposedly a Miracle at our school.”

“What?” he asks, surprised.

“Yeah,” she goes on, “the news broke this morning, look at this.”

She’s got her phone out, open to a news article with a title declaiming that the Miracles were indeed starting school this year - and that the majority of them had ended up in schools in Tokyo. He skims it quickly as they all huddle around her to read over her shoulders. 

Brightly colored hair. Brightly colored eyes. Highly intelligent.

Not much to go on, all things considered - one had to wonder who’d done such a good job of controlling the flow of information and strangling it to the bare minimum. The marketing team of the military - was there such a thing? - apparently earned every cent of their pay. Of course, it would have been incredibly reckless to post, say, photos of each kid entering school but also...students might figure out sooner rather than later, anyway. 

“Brightly colored hair doesn’t actually help,” notes the other girl, Ayumi. She points at her own head which is striped through with lavender. 

It’s true - one of the first things that had changed in the new world after the Miracles was laxity around rules that expressed individualism in school. Just in their courtyard, he could spot a handful of blondes, a fair amount of redheads, a kid with dark grey locks, and someone else with light orange tips. Maybe it was a case of pre-emptively relaxing parts of school life in a bid to help the student body _want_ to return to school? Or maybe they’d just seen the writing on the wall with a massive jump in skin ink and soulmate emotional links. Who knows. 

“Would you dye your hair back to black?” Fuku jokes, “to be sure?”

“Absolutely not. Do you know how long it took me to master this enough to do it on my own?”

“It doesn’t mention schools specifically, though,” observes Samawara-kun, pulling out his own phone to search. “It- _oh_.”

Has an innocuous _oh_ ever sounded so ominous before? Kōki doesn’t think so. Samawara-kun flips his phone down so that everyone can see a new second article. 

There’s a list of schools, confirmed - half of which are not in Tokyo: Kaijō, Yōsen, and Rakuzan High. The majority of which are indeed in Tokyo - Shūtoku High, Tōō Academy, and-

-Seirin High. 

But-

“Wait,” he mutters slowly, “there are seven of them and six schools. Which means two of them are going to the same school?”

His group of classmates pauses.

“Oh, shit, dude.”

“Does it say which one of our schools gets _two_? Holy shit, I wonder why? Maybe two of them are twins or something?”

It’s not a ridiculous idea, honestly - but he can imagine there are at least two other purposes beneath, nefarious or not. The worst one he can think of is purposefully splitting the group up because they’re less powerful together, and therefore manageable. So if two are together they either can’t separate them or they chose not to on purpose.

“-othing. Yeah.”

“Okay, but if this is true, then whoever it is is a First Year like us. Did anyone notice anything?”

The longer looks at the article squished into the small mobile screen, the longer something niggles at him. But, like last night’s dream, he can’t figure out what it is that’s niggling at him and the more he thinks about it as they all stand there talking about the possibilities and trying to guess at what it means that their school was willing (or ordered) to take on one of the living experiments, the more frustrated he feels.

Finally, one of the guys - Niji, he remembers - waves his hand in the air to stop all the talking. “I think it’s going to take at least a few weeks for us to figure out who it is, especially since they’re not normally allowed to use their powers for no reason. And everyone here had to apply to get in so there are at least fifteen different junior high schools represented here. At least. Probably!” 

They all start moving again, pulling up to Seirin’s pretty impressive main building and trying to figure out their homeroom assignments which had been mailed to them the night before. There’s apparently no one else, other than six of them, who’d come here from their old school. And based on their emails, it looks they’re mostly evenly divided up across the six homeroom classes.

“We’re in 1-B,” Fuku says.

“You two have been in the same class since elementary school, _how_ is that possible?”

“We have no idea,” he smiles because their families joke like this every year too. He had to have done something _wonderful_ in a past life to get to have his main man by his side all the time, it’s so awesome. 

They part ways under the arch of the building with friendly waves. So begins his second day in high school.

. . . . 

The energy all day had been high - nervous, tinged with a bit of fear, excited. His morning classes had all kicked off with some version of their teachers acknowledging the news that had broken and then reminding everyone that they were here to learn - not to gawk at fellow students or accuse anyone they don’t know of having magic powers. It all seems to say very clearly that whatever forces and extenuating circumstances that had brought a superpowered human to Seirin High were out of their control - but that they would not tolerate any bullying or disruption to education while on the premises.

Lunch is basically the time for the class to run wild so Fuku, Niji, and some other guys around their assigned seats casually keep the conversation going over lunch. He, though, is quiet as always.

“You think they’re being paid by the military?” 

“Why would the military _pay_ them? Are the Miracles military property?”

That’s exactly the kind of thought that has never stopped being upsetting to him, anxiety-inducing. That someone or something could _own_ another human being. Own their lives or their dreams or their futures. He hates it with every fiber of his being. After the Trials and the horrors unearthed that had exposed Japan’s nationalist underbelly, he prays not.

“If they did and they’re _not_ military property, that’s weird. Besides, all the debate around whether they have equal rights is the most ridiculous.”

“What does that even _mean_ ? Are we Americans, with their penchant for slavery and caste systems? What the actual fuck does _that_ mean?”

“Look, we don’t know if they’re human, that’s all, I’m saying,” defends the guy. “If we only heard the 30% of what they did to the kids in there, then I wonder if they’ll even be able to function in normal society. One has to wonder what they had to do to create superpowers. ”

“Wonder what?” sputters another guy immediately. “Unless there’s some new _scientific_ classification besides the five we have they are human.”

“Are you suggesting that superpowers are innately human?” this from a new guy who sounds thoughtful rather than heated.

“Are you suggesting that superpowers are innately _not_?”

The discussions veer sharply into science and philosophy and Kōki is super fucking relieves. He stays quiet the whole time, notes the guys who seem to fall squarely in the “they’re probably not human” crowd, the ones who seem to be more into discussion the theory and science of “what makes us human” in a neutral manner, and the guys who at least believe that the Miracles are human.

It’s all theoretical and it’s making him anxious. God, he hates this. They’re sitting here debating the humanity of kids their age whom they’ve never even met. No matter how wild their powers or how farfetched, they're human. 

He politely excuses himself in the last twenty minutes just to buy himself time alone before afternoon classes. 

. . . . 

He’s inordinately exhausted by the time the end of the day rolls around - and there’s still at least an hour of basketball club (probably more) to go. Fuku is super excited, basically vibrating out of his skin because this is their first real shot at seeing what they’re made of on a sports team _together_ and he’s done way more research than Kōki has about the kind of talent that the school holds. They change in the second building then head over to the gym.

The group of basketball hopefuls is nearly fifteen people strong, which feels like a lot of people on a team with a strong starting five and a bench that’s only four deep. He feels his hands start to sweat as he clocks height in the room but _somehow_ he and Fuku end up in the very front of the group so he doesn’t have a chance to really scope the competition.

The team Captain gives a short welcome then steps aside to introduce the cute girl he’d noticed earlier who is...their Coach, holy shit.

He had _not_ seen that coming. Aida Riko’s got a clipboard with names, a checklist of to-dos, and the near-supernatural ability to gauge their physical fitness by sight alone thanks to studying sports training and medicine under her father since infancy. It’s not until after she’s had them strip and - and candidly told him that his core is nowhere near strong enough at the moment - that he clocks that the guy who leaves her speechless, a guy with-

-wine red hair and eyes that at a second, third, and fourth glance look the same color. 

He’s speechless too for a minute.

But definitely not for the same reasons.

He looks over at Fuku who’s giving him the same ‘ _what the fuck???_ ’ look and then notices that the rest of the hopefuls are side-eyeing the guy as well. It’s an abrupt reminder - _I’m not problematic, I’m not speciesist, I think Miracles are human_ \- and he tries to snap out of what was no doubt incredibly rude. Luckily, the guy - Kagami Taiga - is unfazed and she pauses to scribble a bunch of numbers down before the Captain reminds her that Kagami-san is the last hopeful.

She reaches for the whistle hanging around her neck and it’s the beginning of his new life.

“Okay, let’s get started with practice!”

. . . . 

The next day of school goes by in the same energetic way as the one before it - the Miracles are still all that everyone can talk about it and somehow, incredibly, _no one_ at any of the other schools that supposedly are hosting Miracles has managed to pin down identities or photos. Either the Miracles are very good at blending in or the teenage population of these high schools is really falling down on the job of sleuthing out the truth.

After stretching and warm-up, Coach has them break into groups for 10m five-on-five play. It’s nerve-wracking because he hasn’t played basketball nearly recently enough to remember exactly what every position does or the rules but he manages to score a lay-up in the first few minutes of his informal match. It’s actually a little bit of fun - he’s just got his eyes on the ball and he’s passing to another guy in the yellow jersey and there’s nothing else floating through his head except movement. When his informal match is over, he’s tired but feeling good.

Then comes the game Kagami-san plays.

There’s-

-it’s unbelievable, is what the hell it is. It’s ten minutes of pure domination. Kagami-san cuts through the players to dunk on the opponents immediately. Then hangs from the rim for a moment, eyes narrowed and focused as he stares at the rest of the court. It goes from there.

By the end of the match, it’s totally clear that 90% of the room _definitely_ thinks Kagami is the school’s resident miracle - and honestly, he kind of believes it too - and that at least a quarter of that group is scared shitless. It doesn’t help that Kagami’s pretty naturally intense. One frustrated growl from him after missing a basket and Kōki’s heart jumps uncomfortably. When Kōki glances over at the current team, who’ve been watching from the bleachers so far, he can’t fully tell what the mood is on their end. 

It makes him-

-anxious.

. . . . 

The rumors are all over school the next day but it’s not clear whether anyone’s said anything to Kagami directly because at basketball practice because isn’t-

-any less contained or intense than the first two days. 

They run three full five-on-five games this time and Kagami dominates. He’s taller, stronger, _harder_ than anyone there. His feet fly across the floor and his eyes are narrowed in concentration. It’s, objectively, really cool to watch. Subjectively, it just enforces the fact that he could very well be a Miracle. The one thing to mar that assumption is that he’s fast - but not the fastest in the room as that honor goes to another first-year named Kosei Tsuburaba who seems to flit from end to end in one smooth motion and who’s hands can field passes from anyone.

At the end of practice, he’s exhausted - his arms and legs are increasingly sore, his back muscles twinge from the extra hip thrusts and glute bridges exercises he’s been given to make his lower half stronger, and he’s ready to get over the pain to the part where his body is stronger and more capable. Fuku’s extra drills have been about running - which he _hates_ \- so he’s tired but in a different way.

They stagger out of the gym and change into their clothes and, all the way back to Fuku’s home, talk about how much harder this will be than they expected. 

“Do you think he _is_ a Miracle?”

“I don’t know,” Kōki shrugs. Something says that what they’re witnessing is the start of a longer growth spurt for the guy. “Honestly, I don’t even think he’s playing at 100% right now.”

And that, perhaps, was stronger proof than anything else.

. . . . 

The research that he and Fuku have been doing on basketball is bearing way more fruit than he’d ever expected. And basketball hierarchy and ability lend themselves well to legends, or so he learns quickly. The current reigning batch of talent is five guys from a myriad of places across the country, known collectively as _Itsutsu no ōkan_ , or the Five Crowns. 

“Wow,” he’d muttered to himself when he found the first of _many_ articles about Japan’s strongest high school talent. Someone’s got a flair for drama and poetry.

Five students whose prodigal rise to becoming the best in the country seems to have begun, unanimously, in junior high school. All written extensively about in sports magazines from junior high through now - each, by providence, having unique abilities and playing styles that have garnered them as much publicity as is possible for students that play seriously before the collegiate level. Glossy magazine articles, newspaper print-outs, blog posts - he devours everything he can find of the Five before he comes to the heart of the matter and one of the most shocking stories around. 

Seirin’s basketball club was founded by the player nicknamed _Tesshin_ , Iron Heart - who’s taller even than Kagami-san, if printed stats are to believed. The first thing he notices, actually, of the photo of him from last year’s InterHigh is that his long brown hair that frames an honest-looking face. 

Teppei Kiyoshi looks like a kind person. 

It bears out in just about every piece of media that Kōki can find - tall, incredibly honest, good-natured, super humble. A prodigal talent who’d founded the basketball club last year then led Seirin to beat the formerly Tokyo favorite Senshinkan Kōkō by nearly 20 points to advance to the Winter Cup. Shortly after beating Kirisaki Daīchi High and tying with Tōō Academy, Teppei Kiyoshi went missing with what rumors believe to be a mystery injury. There’s been nothing of him in the press, other than pure speculation and fervent hope for his return in the year since.

 _Iron Heart,_ Kōki says to himself. 

He wonders whether the rumors are true, thinks about the fact that they’ve never seen him at practice, and hopes to be worthy of the team that a guy with a nickname like that built from scratch.

. . . . 

Mid-way through the second week, it finally comes to him - the military’s marketing/PR body is working overtime to keep evidence out of the press. He knows for sure that his classmates have snuck photos of Kagami Taiga because he’d overheard at least one girl in the hallways bragging to friends and he has no doubt that someone’s sent something to the press but somehow there are still no pictures of the Miracles anywhere.

Some kind of moratorium? An understanding with outlets?

He doesn’t see how but it’s the only thing he can think of.

And still, no one has said anything directly to Kagami-san.

. . . . 

His brother’s first formal Soulmate meeting is an occasion - which means that Koki gets to watch him get ready and it’s _funny._ He’s never seen Kyo this nervous - he picks one shirt, then tosses it, then picks up another, then stops. Like clockwork. 

“Kyo,” he says, “you text and email Chiyo all the time.”

“I know! You think I don’t know that?”

“Then what are you so nervous about? And I know how ironic that is coming from _me_.”

“What if I’m not dressed up enough?” his Onii-san practically wails like the saddest toddler in the world, “Her parents sound prim and proper!”

“Okay, so we’ll pick out something that is more formal and make sure that Tou and Kaa-san do the same. What else?”

“She’s two years older than me and I only just started college! She’s practically an older woman.”

Because his brother is genuinely about to tear his hair out, it would be super unkind of him to snicker. So he does not. But he can’t help but be incredibly fond. No one who’s _ever_ met Kyo has managed to strongly dislike him for long. And his own soulmate, who’s been _literally writing him for over a year_ is certainly not going to be the first. But he guesses this is normal and tries to be supportive.

“She gave you her email first. Not because she’s a friendly person, although it sounds like she is, but because she wanted to get to know you a year ago. She hasn’t stopped getting to know you since. This is just Step One of all the formal stuff.”

“You’re right, I know you’re right.”

He hops off the bed and reaches for the light orange button-down. “I am, and this is your best color.”

. . . .

The day they find out they make the cuts dawns bright and sunny. Three weeks of his life outside of classes have been devoted to a sport he’d never thought of playing this time last year. Crashing at Fuku’s after runs on Saturday mornings, heading into the open gym at Tama’s public gym - four weeks and his physical body feels and moves differently. He’s actually really freaking proud of how much work he’s invested into it and how better he feels as a result. And he’s nervous but _good_ nervous. Kagami Taiga would no doubt secure one of the spots. The other four were up for grabs.

Coincidentally, it’s also the day before his first day on the Literature Committee - he’s been selected alongside someone else from his class who can’t remember at the moment. For a moment, it strikes him as incredibly odd that he can’t remember who he’s partnered with for the schoolwide Committee as there are _only_ two First Years selected each year. He can’t seem to hold on to the thought and soon moves on.

He floats through the day in a sea of heightened anticipation and nervousness, where Fuku is fairly vibrating out of his seat. By the time they stand in front of Coach and the current team for a last physical evaluation, he’s feeling like it’s time to throw up. Obviously.

Shit, he didn’t expect to be so nervous or to want this so badly.

“I want to thank each and every one of you for showing up every day and giving it your all,” Captain Hyuuga says seriously, pushing up his glasses briefly. “You’ve all worked very hard to prepare. Coach will announce the names of those selected to join the team.”

“Alright, guys. Without further ado - Kagami Taiga. Kosei Tsuburaba. Fukuda Hiroshi. Yo Shindo. Furihata Kōki.”

For a minute, the ringing in his ears is all he can hear before the relief crashes in.

Holy shit - he _made the team!_

. . . . 

Kagami Taiga as a teammate is even more intense than he was as a competitor, pre-selection for the team. The guy’s got a fire lit under him and a clear goal in mind - to be as good as if not better than the Five Crowns _._ It keeps being scary, every time he growls (or the first time he’d grabbed someone by the shirt to yell at them for being defeatist). It leaves his heart pounding, actually, and the rest of the First Years skitter past him whenever they have to play for him. 

When Coach thwacks him on the back of the head, all the other First Years hold their breath. Kagami-san bows his head apologizes gruffly to the entire room, and the moment passes.

All the senpais take them out for ice cream afterward and hassle them into footing the bill, annoyingly enough. But he doesn’t mind since they spend three hours in the diner split among two tables, and he gets to swap historical fantasy book recs with Satoshi Tsuchida and laugh at Shinji Koganei’sstories about unbelievable things that have happened to him at his part-time job. It’s the most fun he’s had in a while with people who aren’t his family or Fuku and Fuku’s family.

It feels good.

It feels, a little, like the team might be home.

. . . . 

“My Soulmate’s pretty excited about something,” muses Fuku as they get off the train at their school’s stop. “I wonder what’s going on?”

He looks over at the guy who’s basically his second brother and privately wonders, for the millionth time, Fuku’s decided to so strictly adhere to the old rules about using the skin ink bond to write to his soulmate. Yes, society frowns on people doing that until they hit 18 (age differences and resulting power dynamics being the biggest factor cited by every major health and soulbond organization) but God knows that a lot of teenagers have found creative ways to sidestep that rule in the last year alone. 

“Why? Is it persistent?”

“Kind of. And it doesn’t feel like clean excitement.”

“...clean?”

“I mean,” Fuku clarifies, “there are other feelings mixed in. Happiness yesterday, worry today. It’s not like them to feel so strongly that _I_ feel it for so long.”

He gets quiet, like he usually does when he’s sorting his emotions out from his soulmate, and needs a minute to order them in his mind. 

_It’s not like them_ , he’d just said. What would it be like to know enough about someone you’ve never met, never conversed with, to know what is and isn’t like them?

. . . . 

He shows up to the smaller auditorium in the two-storied arts building, a quick five-minute walk from the building where his homeroom is. The first person his eyes land on-

_-eyes a crazy bright blue and hair a lighter shade to match and-_

-feels vaguely familiar. Did they always have someone with hair that shade of pastel blue? How had he never noticed this guy before? He stares while people around the room get settled and the Chair brings the meeting to order. 

Introductions only make him more confused because when Kuroko Tetsuya introduces himself, he quietly states that he is in class 1-B. Kōki...is in class 1-B and can swear on his life that he has never seen this guy before. It makes him stumble through his own introduction, confused and wracking his brain.

Maybe he’d had regularly colored hair before and dyed it recently? And gotten contacts too?

But he can’t remember anyone quite Kuroko-san’s height from their class and while Kōki might be quiet, the one thing he’s always had going for him is that he’s hyper-observant. Anxiety and being naturally reserved had ensured that particular skill would only grow stronger with time. There is simply no way that he would have not clocked to Kuroko-san’s presence before.

At the end of the meeting, he tunes in enough to gather that he and his fellow First Year are meant to spend time talking to students to come up with three book recommendations that will then be vetted for inclusion in Seirin’s annual booklist student set and on display in the library in the month before the summer break. Or, at least, he hopes he’s got that right because God knows he wasn’t listening.

When the meeting comes to a close, he walks up to Kuroko Tetsuya and then is immediately at a loss for words. Does he ask the guy where he came from? Where he sits? Does he pretend that he’s seen him before? In the end, Kuroko Tetsuya takes the decision out of his hands.

“Hello,” he says with an expressionless face, sounding neither excited nor especially bored. “It is nice to meet you, Furihata Kōki-san.”

“A-ah, yeah,” he forces out, “it’s nice to meet you too. I’m looking forward to working together.”

“I am, as well. Do you have club activities now?”

“I do, actually. I’m off to basketball.”

“Ah, I’ve played before but not for long and not very well. I can walk there with you so we can talk about the plan?”

“S-sure.” All the while, Kōki stares at this expressionless boy and is increasingly sure that something is _off_ . Even if Kuroko-san had dark hair and brown eyes, his turn of phrase and the tone of his voice is actually distinct enough that Kōki would _remember_. And he doesn’t.

He doesn’t.

“Have you been on a Literature Committee before?” he asks politely.

“No.”

Kuroko-san says nothing else after that. It’s a bit disconcerting, especially when he was the one who wanted to follow Kōki to the gym.

“U-uh, okay. Well, we can do this any number of ways. We can either talk more to people in our class and the rest of the First Year classes to get a taste of what everyone’s reading these days and from that theme find books we think are a great read and a great reflection of what our Year’s current literary interests are.”

He’s babbling. He’s nervous and babbling. 

“Ah, that’s a very helpful process,” Kuroko-san says politely but it’s hard to read whether he’s being perfunctory or not given that his tone stays even and his face stays...the same. Kōki doesn’t know anyone who’s this good at remaining bland. He’s relieved when they get to the gym and politely excuses himself to enter and change.

When he looks back at the open doorway a moment later, Kuroko-san is no longer there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in a world where the Miracles didn’t exist as sports prodigies, what would basketball have looked like in Japan? basically, I’m here to give the Uncrowned their crowns back. and gift the rest of the freshman Teppei and all the rest of the senpais as universal big brothers who are confident in their abilities.


	3. dog days

The puzzle of a blue-haired boy who he can’t remember grips him hard after practice - and he spills everything to Fuku. 

“You’ve never seen him right?” he asks Fuku.

“There’s no way that we’ve _both_ never seen a blue-haired guy in our class.”

“What are the possibilities that there’s a kid in our class that we’ve never noticed before?”

They just stare at each other.

“You-”

“I mean-” 

“Yeah.” 

There’s no way they’re not on the same page about _who_ this kid is.

“Can you drag me over to introduce me to him tomorrow?”

“Yeah.”

They’re silent for the entire train ride home. It’s not until they get off at their stop and begin walking that they begin talking again.

“But how does it work exactly? How does he get credit for showing up in classes that we can’t see him in?” All good questions that Fuku’s asking. He cannot _believe_ that they are standing here debating how a superpower works. What even is life. “Are his powers...selective?”

“Hell if I know but if he’s on the Literature Committee, he can’t be invisible all the time - we had to apply and get interviewed by the current members. Also, I can’t imagine he wants to be invisible all the time-”

-wait. 

If Kuroko Tetsuya has been present since the first day of school, then that means he’s been present for every awful conversation - every debate, every sly remark, every stupid joke - that the students in 1-B and beyond have made about him and his...fellow Miracles. It’s the most unkind thing that Kōki can think of, the most _inhumane_ thing. 

It weighs on his chest all the rest of the way home.

. . . .

He walks into his homeroom with a single mission in mind: look for and keep track of Kuroko Tetsuya. 

He’s got this whole plan he cooked up last night - that invisibility doesn’t mean that something doesn’t take up space. It does - it’s just that sight doesn’t clock it. So he figures that the trick to seeing Kuroko-san is to look for spaces where nothing is but something _should be_. What’s tripping him up is the fact that if that theory was entirely correct, an invisible Tetsuya would just be impossible to see but his desk, for example, would be visible. That clearly isn’t the case because he can’t recall seeing a desk in class that is consistently empty. 

He can’t recall seeing an extra desk at all.

The internet forums had been no direct help last night, but they had been _alive_ . If he were the kind of guy who was on the backend of the internet, the dark anonymous corners, he would probably have access to way more information. As it is, students from the other schools have started speculating about how powers work. No photos to be found anywhere (man, whatever PR firm is managing this is getting _paid_ ) but it sounds like Yosen and Too have both identified their Miracle students because the two made no secret of the fact that they were. The comments were half awed at the gap between normal Japanese physical ability and the Miracles, who are built taller and broader apparently. But no one’s actually _seen_ them do anything superpowered. 

Right. So, no help, there. Just his half-brained theory and the opportunity to test it.

Fuku follows him closely behind but actually sits two seats down from his window seat. When he first sweeps the room with his gaze, nothing. So he takes his seat, gets ready for the day, and then hangs out for fifteen minutes until class is actually supposed to start. When the teacher calls the class to order, he looks around again - still nothing.

Well. No one ever said it would be _easy_.

. . . . 

Things are different the day after. Maybe it’s because he’s exhausted from a pretty tough practice the day before - he’d fumbled every shot he’d taken, and the senpais hadn’t had particularly encouraging words to say - but he ends up getting in five minutes after class starts, and apparently that makes all the difference. He comes in through the back door, spots Kuroko-san in a seat near the door that he’s _never noticed in his life_ and does a dramatic double-take. 

He vaguely notices the teacher waving him to sit but-

-holy shit, he’s really _real_ and he’s really there.

It’s crazy awkward because Kōki’s seated all the way on the other side of the room yet he has this irrational conviction that if he looks away from the guy for too long, he’ll lose sight of him altogether. Fuku gives him _you alright?_ look and he just raises his eyebrows high as hell and they have a whole silent conversation with just his eyebrows but it’s clear Fuku does not see Kuroko.

Which, actually, makes Kōki’s brain jump into overdrive for a minute - _why can he see him?_ \- before his usual cautiousness returns and he leans back to observe.

It’s...well, it’s just as mystifying as _tortured survivors of inhuman experimentation_ would yield because he simply can’t understand the mechanics of what he’s seeing.

No one else in the class seems to notice Kuroko. 

No one glances his way, not even the teacher - which is, perhaps, the most confusing part of this. Has Yami Sensei decided not to draw attention to Kuroko-san or does he not see him either? It wouldn’t make sense for your own teacher not to see you but, then again, how do we know that the Miracles are actually getting graded? Maybe the point of integrating them into the school system is for them to be socialized - not educated? Aren’t they all supposed to be really intelligent naturally? Who’s to say they haven’t already learned all of this already? But if the point is to be social then Kuroko-san being invisible really defeats the point, doesn’t it?

Jesus, Kōki’s going to have a headache by lunchtime.

It takes Kuroko-san less than ten minutes to cotton on to Kōki’s staring and when their eyes meet, Kuroko’s face remains relatively blank. No smile, no wave, nothing. It’s actually a little scary - his heart is beating faster than it should because of the stress of meeting that gaze - but after a minute, Kuroko nods and Kōki manages to smile back shakily.

Kōki is _definitely_ going to have a headache by lunchtime.

. . . . 

“Kōki, with me.” 

There’s nothing to make one feel apprehensive like being called out by Captain Hyūga to join him where he’s standing on the sidelines. Hyūga-senpai just kind of looks at him, with a really neutral expression that is hard to read. Immediately, he feels his skin start to heat slowly - a sure sign that he’s going to start sweating in response to anxiety but not out of place for where he is, which is good. The increased feeling that he’s in trouble and needs to panic about it is _not._ The last thing he wants is to have anything even remotely looking like a panic attack anywhere near this team that respects and believes in him. 

“Hey, Captain,” he says quietly, rubbing his hands together and watching his senpai. “What’s up?”

Hyūga-senpai continues to look at him for a moment and the heat under his skin kicks up a notch - he can’t keep looking at him this way so he drops his gaze to the floor and focuses on taking two really slow breaths. The anticipation might kill him. 

“You were off yesterday and, from how distracted you’re looking during warm-ups, it seems like you’re going to be off again today.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I guess I just haven’t seen you distracted during practice in the five weeks since you first showed up, and our first practice match against Kaijo High is this weekend. You worried?”

“I’m sorry.”

“Stop apologizing, I just want to know if something’s going on.” 

Is he worried? Like...yeah, he’s worried. I mean he’s _always_ worried, that’s a little bit of what anxiety is. He’s been dealing with being terrified of the world for four years but that’s never gone away and now he’s anxious because it feels like he and Fuku now have this secret to keep about a superpowered classmate who can hear all the terrible things that their other classmates sometimes say about his existence. And he’s super scared right at this moment that the reason Hyūga-senpai is asking this question is that he secretly wants to kick him off the team - and immediately his eyes start to tingle like they want to water. He’s not aware that he’s shaking until a hand claps down on his shoulders and his head snaps back up and-

-his captain looks _worried_. “Let’s take a walk, Kōki.”

He concentrates on putting one foot in front of the other and following senpai out of the gym and into the open air. It takes a minute to recognize that Hyūga-senpai is leading them out of the courtyard and into the open area in between tennis courts where the team is practicing. By the time they are there, there’s another hand on his shoulder pushing him to sit down on the grass.

“Take a deep breath.”

He takes one. Then another. Then several more. All the while his mind is whirling about in his head, thoughts doing their best to straighten out and calm a little bit once more. There’s silence for however many minutes it takes him to pull it together. Once he does, he feels deeply and painfully embarrassed.

The thing is...anxiety is a disability. It’s a funny word - disability. He read a lot of books the summer after the onset of this to try and understand what was happening. He hangs out on the internet, of course, he looked there too. He wanted to figure out not just _why_ it was happening to him but whether he was alone. 

It’s not the kind of disability that people can see and acknowledge and go “oh yeah, of course, you need a break because your body can’t keep up”. Instead, it’s the kind of disability that people start hurtful rumors over. That forces him to stay inside sometimes when he can’t fight it and that makes him quiet even when he wants to speak up. It makes him invisible sometimes. A little like Kuroko-san, which maybe is why he’s so upset _about_ Kuroko.

He doesn’t want to feel this way. He doesn’t want to be worried about the silence between sentences from people he doesn’t know - or people he does. He doesn’t want to have to be walked out of a gym because his Captain caught on to the fact that he was about to lose his shit in a room full of people.

He doesn’t _want_ it. 

But he doesn’t get a choice. 

What he’s about to do is the most terrifying thing he’s done this year alone. If he tells Hyūga-senpai, he might see him as...defective. Or broken. Unable to control his body and his reactions. Unable to play basketball which he’s grown to love so much. Unable to stay with Seirin. Fuck.

 _But_ , he thinks bleakly, raising his head to stare up at the sky, _do I have a choice?_

He bites the bullet but keeps his eyes on the clouds and the blue above.

“I have two types of clinical disorders.” He sounds like a robot (he knows he sounds like a robot) but it’s like he’s already distancing himself from everything in order to get through this. “Panic disorder and generalized anxiety disorder. I take medications and see a therapist once a week. Sometimes, I’m more anxious than I can manage and things happen. But I’m usually good enough at controlling it to go to school and deal with social situations, mostly.”

The silence at his side is unbearable. When he looks over, Hyūga-senpai's face is arranged into a perfect 'oh' of shock. And then he looks at a loss as to how to respond immediately which means that Kōki has to sit there for a few minutes while that damned silence stretches out.

“I’m sorry.” “It was just surprising is all, since, you know, I know you as smart, observant, and a team-player.”

“I’m still,” he says shakily, hurting, “all of those things.”

He _knew_ it would end up this way, he knows it, he’s going to lose this, he’s going to lose Seirin and he _can’t_ \- 

Next thing he knows he’s been yanked into the most inflexible hug he’s ever been a part of in his life. Hyūga-senpai is not that tactile - which Kōki knows because _he_ is - but his head is buried in the guy's chest and there are two arms around him that feel _very_ immovable and the tingle behind his eyes becomes unbearable.

“You _are_ . You are, Kōki. Damn it, I’m sorry this is not coming out right and I didn’t mean to stress you out,” he hears senpai’s slightly panicked voice somewhere above his head, “you are _all of these things_ and apparently also very strong. We are lucky to have you.”

The dam breaks - all the worry and the discomfort and the _relief_ \- he bursts into tears.

. . . .

Afterward - after, he means, he really does go to pieces and senpai totally lets him, and the embarrassment is more along the lines of _holy shit I didn’t know I was going to cry all over your shirt_ and less of the mind-numbing terror that he was going to be kicked off of the team and-

-yeah, so, afterward. Just outside the gym, Hyūga-senpai stops and looks at him.

“Did I do something to trigger it?” 

“Long silences,” he says honestly, “and not knowing why I’ve been called tends to make me uneasy. But I’m also stressed about other things.”

“I’ll remember that going forward. And...just tell me, if I or anyone else on the team does something that makes you uncomfortable, okay?”

Turns out it’s been a full twenty minutes since they stepped out. It’s also probably super clear that he’s been crying because his face feels twice its normal size but Coach doesn’t say anything in particular about them missing that much practice. He gets a bunch of backslaps from his fellow First Years and a head pat from Mitobe-senpai but no one makes any jokes about them being gone or really acknowledges it at the moment. Fuku seems to want to hover protectively but can’t because they’ve still got another hour and ten minutes to go at least.

After practice, when he’s stepping out of the shower, Kagami happens to be getting in and stops. 

“You’re part of the team, you know. Don’t ever worry about that.”

This...wow. Kagami, somehow, had pinpointed what had happened. And this was perhaps his way of offering support without saying it all the way out loud. It’s nice.

“Thanks, Kagami.”

. . . .

He can’t find a good way to approach Kuroko-san on Tuesday or Wednesday. For one, it feels like he’s now the only person in school carrying a secret that would for sure disrupt any and all calm in the student body. And since he’s not entirely sure how the powers work, he doesn’t know if Kuroko even wants to be known in his class. He debates walking up and saying hi to him during the lunch period but it feels like that would be way too public to be comfortable for him or for Kuroko-san. He doesn’t stop being _hyper-aware_ of Kuroko-san, whenever he can see him. 

It’s just that he can’t keep up the hypervigilance in the face of school and basketball. He’s been staying longer in the gym - inspired by all five Second Years who seem to be working overtime to get themselves into shape. There’s a fever pitch to the looks in their eyes, from the gentle giant Mitobe to Izuki. It’s like, despite shocking the pre-collegiate basketball world as the emerging black horse last year, there’s still a chip on their shoulder. 

There’s still something they feel they desperately need to prove.

And it makes it so that he and the four other First Years basically throw themselves headfirst into overdrive too.

. . . .

“Hey, Nii-chan!” Katsumi sticks her head in the doorway Friday night and he can already tell that she doesn’t actually want anything serious, “Whatcha doing?”

“Homework, which is what I’m always doing before dinner.”

“You’re going to bed early because of your practice match tomorrow, right?”

“Yeah,” he’s smiling., “what’s up?”

She crosses the room to sit on his bed and it’s like he’s hit all over again by the fact that the twins are legitimately about to enter junior high school. It’s really dumb to think it but they’re growing up as fast as _he’s_ growing up. And they’ve got soulmates and school drama and sports and dance and it’s like he blinked and they weren’t small enough for him to pick up anymore. Man, he sounds like his father.

Also, she looks uncharacteristically serious - she’s always been the more independent twin (only needed him and Kyo to look after her and stand up for her until she was big enough to do it on her own which, predictably, was like age five) so she doesn’t usually come into his room looking _so cautious._ He closes his textbook and swivels his chair around to face her. 

“Sumi? What’s going on?”

“You never have time for us anymore.” 

He blinks. A couple of times, actually.

“I never see you because I have practice too - Kaori at least gets to hang out with you on weekends but I always have games. So I never see you anymore.”

“I-” he starts to say and then realizes that he actually can’t remember the last time they hung out, it had to have been this month but-

Huh.

“I’m sorry,” he says gently. Guess joining the club really has taken over his life. “I-”

“Don’t get me wrong, I’m so excited that you’ve decided to become an athlete too - and you totally love it - I just miss you, that’s all.”

Oof - now he’s feeling guilty. 

“I’m sorry. Yeah, it’s been hard trying to learn a new sport on the floor and to practice and spending time with the team. Can I make it up to you? Scary movie marathon, Sunday night?”

She perks up. “Ice cream - just you and me, right before?”

He holds out his finger like they used to do all the time when they were younger.

“Pinky swear.”

She hooks her pinky around his then pulls him into a hug. 

“Okay. I’ll let you finish.”

He gazes at the door for a few minutes after she goes. It’s a good reminder that he hadn’t thought he’d ever needed to hear - basketball is super important to him and is definitely going to remain so but his family has always been his life. And he shouldn’t forget that.

. . . .

Kaijo is really really good. 

Which is why it makes sense that the seniors, with their experience, lose their game by less than five points but the team’s new recruits are outclassed and outmanned by over 40 points. What’s miraculous about it is that he shakes - he’s scared he’s going to mess up, scared he’s going to embarrass the team - but it doesn’t stop him. He shakes and he keeps going. He doesn’t feel confident in attempting a shot and he barely makes his one lay-up. He fumbles three passes from Kagami and one pass from Fuku. He gets the ball taken from him twice by an intense-looking bushy-browed guy three times. And he shakes but he breathes through it and he keeps going.

He didn’t know if he was capable of that and he _is._

He is. And if he can keep it together in a practice game against a national-level team then he can keep it together, period. It’s like a little glow in his chest that warms him through the post-game conversation and Coach’s promise to whip them even further into shape. It warms him all the way home.

. . . .

The stars align when he comes in two hours ahead of school and stops by the classroom first to find that, lo and behold, one Kuroko Tetsuya is also early and sitting down. Why? He has no idea but he’s going to take his chances where he gets them.

“Hi,” he hopes he’s sounding _cheerful_ and not _nervous beyond belief_ , “it’s good to see you, Kuroko-san.”

“It is good to see you too, Kōki-san.” 

“I think I missed you last week - I looked for you in class but didn’t find you.”

“Ah, I had a few medical appointments so I had to miss school the last three days of the week.”

“Oh, okay. I-I hope everything’s okay.” He winces practically as soon as the words leave his mouth - there’s no way that doesn’t come off as invasive or false or potentially insensitive what with the history of _torture_ \- and tries to walk that back. “Uh, I mean that-”

His words stutter to a halt and his palms start to sweat.

Jeez.

“It’s okay,” Kuroko-san says, his facial expression remaining the exact same which means it’s _not_ okay at all, fuck, “I’m well.”

The conversation stalls for a bit while Kōki tries very very hard to manage the rising tide of stress brought about by this social situation he’s initiated going sideways.

“Did you want to speak to me about something?” Kuroko-san finally asks slowly.

“Uh, did you want to join me for lunch later?” he blurts back. Not actually what he’d meant to say but good enough. “I eat on the rooftop with my Fuku who is in our class.”

There’s a long pause where Kuroko-san doesn’t move but gives off an impression of complete surprise. Something about it - that he’s not the only one a little wrong-footed in this conversation - manages to relax him a little bit. When the blue-haired guy does speak, it’s quiet in a way that Kōki reads as cautious. 

“Just you two?”

“Yeah, yes. I’m not much of a big crowds person. Fuku is my childhood best friend - we’ve been stuck with each other since we were both four years old.”

“That would be...nice. Thank you for the invitation.” There’s a brief pause where Kuroko-san just looks at him and he finishes putting his things down.

“Okay. I...I’ll see you later?”

“Yes. See you later.”

Lunch finds him texting Fuku _“dude, please be cool”_ before they both get up out of their seats and head over to the door. Well, not both of them because Fuku still doesn’t seem to see that there’s a chair by the door but he’s following Kōki and is determined to make a good impression at the initial introduction. 

In the three feet before they get to Kuroko, Kōki wonders if he’s being pushy by not giving the guy a way out. He is, but it would be even more impolite to just...go up to the roof when they’re _in the same class_ without acknowledging it? But then again no one has noticed Kuroko - would he be outing him if he did it here? That thought instantly makes bile rise and he grabs Fuku’s hands and switches directions, thankfully before Kuroko-san has even really seemed to look up from where he’s carefully putting away his books. 

Fuku is confused.

“Wouldn’t it be like exposing him if we walked up to him in class?” he asks worriedly, as an explanation. 

“Oh, shit, yeah. You think he’ll still come up?”

“I hope so.”

They buy onigiris at the cafeteria, as usual for Tuesdays, to supplement what they’ve got (super strict diet with Coach, now) and take the stairs slowly. 

‘It’s...kind of hard to believe that there’s really someone with powers in our class.” 

“And you still couldn't see him right? All morning?”

“It wasn't even that. I _tried_ to stare down the spot where you said he sits - not only did I not see him because when I look at the place near the door all I see is the door itself but sometimes I’d catch myself forgetting why I was looking at the door.”

They just look at each other. He, for one, is trying really hard not to feel freaked out because _hello more proof,_ and his best friend is just looking more and more thoughtful by the moment. They hold their respective lunches in their hands, thinking about the fact that the world is really this freaking weird.

“Okay, you know I love physics so this is seriously puzzling.” Fuku actually really does like physics so it’s no wonder he looks more intrigued than scared. “He’s visible and our eyes just don’t register that he’s there but _yours_ do. But is it also something also? Doesn’t one of them have telepathy? What if all of them to some extent can tell the human brain stuff - and his is just telling our brains ‘not to notice’ him?”

So, then, his brain’s stopped listening to the command? Because he’s seen Kuroko Tetsuya already and his brain can’t forget that? 

“Let’s just...keep going upstairs for now. Don’t want anyone to overhear us, and I definitely don’t want him to.”

They keep heading up the flights of stairs, open the door unto the roof, and-

-Kuroko-san is already there, standing at the white railings that rim the perimeter and looking up into the sky. When he glances at Fuku, it’s clear that Fuku sees him now and looks shocked to be able to. Kōki’s gaze gets drawn back to Kuroko-san, who must not hear the door close behind them because he doesn’t seem to move, blue eyes fixed on something they can’t see in this distance. Or maybe nothing at all. 

He looks alone.

Lonely.

Something about it breaks Kōki’s heart, actually. And that feeling in his chest is probably what makes him break the silence and announce their presence.

“Kuroko-san,” he calls out. No change in Kuroko’s expression, at least as he can tell from the side, but the guy swivels swiftly (in a way that might mean he’s surprised) and takes them in as they come closer. “Hello. I’m glad you made it.”

“Hey man,” Fuku steps in with a laugh and a handshake, “I’m Fukuda Hiroshi and I’ve been stuck with _this_ guy since birth. Good to meet you.”

Kuroko-san accepts the handshake and the pat on the back politely and nods his head. “It’s nice to meet you too. Are you also on the basketball team like Kōki?”

“I am! Coach says that with a lot of practice outside of practice, I’ll shape up into a good Center.”

“I’m apparently getting molded into a Point-Guard,” Kōki pipes up with a smile on the outside, and an intentional promise to just be cool this lunch period at least on the inside. 

“I actually like to watch basketball,” Kuroko-san offers quietly. “But mostly professional basketball. Before I came to Seirin, I did do research so I know that this club was started by one of the _Itsutsu no ōkan_.”

“Yeah, yeah it was. Still haven’t met him though.”

“Yeah, none of our Senpais talk about him a lot nor does Coach but we all know who he is. Did you bring lunch?”

It’s then that Kōki notices that Kuroko is actually empty-handed.

“Ah, I forgot to bring it today.”

“Oh,” he says, instantly concerned, “you should have told me - here, you can have this? It’s onigiri - two okaka and three kombu.”

“I got three each of tuna mayo and tarako,” Fuku says. “So I can add mine in too if you don’t like those flavors?”

“We’re on pretty strict diets with Coach anyway so my bento is all protein and veggies - we could go without the carbs.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, no problem.”

Kuroko-san looks at Kōki's outstretched hand for a long moment (it feels oddly weighted, like the decision to take the food is _more_ or something _else,_ and that makes Kōki actually hold still and hold his breath) before he carefully takes the box and looks back up. His face smooths out and that’s when Kōki notices that maybe he’d been tense even before. 

“Thank you.”

“Here, let’s sit - and we can swap all the onigiri out for the ones you like.”

It takes a fun couple of minutes to rearrange one of the boxes with the two okaka and tarago onigiri (which Kuroko stated he has had and likes) and two each of kombu and tina mayo (which he admits he’s never had). By the time they’ve got that sorted, they’re all just hungry and dig in without talking for a little while.

“So,” he says after clearing the veggies in his bento first, “what’s your favorite book this week?”

Kuroko’s shoulders drop which seems to mean the question relaxes him.

“I’ve been rereading Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go.”

Before Fuku can even ask, Kōki pats him on the shoulder and-

“Remember the movie about clones and cottages we watched last year?”

“Oh. Ah.”

“Mmm,” he continues, “I read it and thought it was sad. The movie kinda confirmed it. What made you want to reread it?”

“It’s a really matter-of-fact look at how we lose our innocence.” 

“I read it as a parable of mortality, honestly.”

“Are they mutually exclusive?”

No. They’re not. A book about kids realizing the inevitability of their own individual deaths in a tone that a ton of really popular critics think is strangely matter-of-fact means it’s not. Even his own father, after reading the book the first time, had asked him what he’d thought about death. He’d been twelve and maybe a little too young for it but he’d been sad. Now, he watches Kuroko Tetsuya’s blue hair wave in the breeze and his blue eyes focus on his food. And he’s sure, more certain than he’s been about anything else that day, that the awfulness that Kuroko has experienced and the fact that there are only seven survivors of what seemed to be hundreds and hundreds of experiments means that the guy has stared down mortality too. 

“I guess not,” is all he says aloud and his voice sounds quiet, even in his own ears. “They lost their innocence fairly early on - about themselves and about their lives. Their purpose, I guess. There’s not a lot of hope in it but there’s a quiet dignity in how they come to terms with it.”

Kuroko-san looks up, cocks his head to the left. “You know I’m a Miracle.”

He and Fuku both go still. There's a moment where he doesn't even feel like panicking because _why would he_ and is more just frozen by the surprise that Kuroko had decided to just come right on out with it. But then he can't look away from the lack of expression and the slight - so slight normal people wouldn't notice it - rise in the other teen's shoulders and he's still because he's listening.

“Yes, I can see by your faces that you’d come to that conclusion. I knew that putting myself up for the Literature Committee would mean showing up and staying present. I did it anyway.”

“Why?” 

Kuroko blinks. “Because books were the first thing I was allowed to have.”

 _Jesus,_ Kōki thinks to himself _._ And the way he says it is the same sort of quiet matter-of-fact thing that the characters in the book say. Like the horror behind a statement like that - all the terrible things that this guy has no doubt lived through, all the torture out on the public internet for all and sundry to read - is so common-place that it’s normal. That Kuroko is used to it.

He can feel his throat burning, like he wants to shout or cry or-

- _Jesus._

“Well,” he whispers hoarsely. Clears his throat, tries again. “Well, I’m glad you did. A-and we don’t mean you any harm.”

“What he said,” Fuku reaches over and claps Kuroko on the shoulder again with a serious look. “We’re not going to out you, to the rest of the class or anything, if they don’t notice you. But we’d like to be friends. If you’re ready for that.”

“You don’t care that I’m a Miracle?” Kuroko asks, voice low and _terribly_ measured.

“No.” And he personally doesn’t, anymore.

Not in the way the guy might think. It doesn’t take much to smile warmly and to mean it.

“We could always use more friends.”


	4. best be believing

Now that he’s been playing long enough to understand his own weaknesses and the positions, it’s pretty clear that if he can become good at everything he’s best suited for small forward - not point guard which is what they might have first been grooming him for. 

He’s fairly agile, decently tall, and is one of the faster members with endurance training (probably third behind Kosei). So? His strategy this first year is to get the basics down. To ask Shinji-senpai a lot of questions and to work with Mitobe on defense and to watch the Vice-Captain. But some things he can do on his own. Which is why he's on his way to the park to practice shots.

The problem is that he’s not alone.

“Come on,” Kyo says, looking excited and way too energetic about tagging along to the local basketball court, “it’s not like you can practice by yourself.”

“Uhhhh, actually, since I’m learning the basics that’s  _ exactly  _ what I need to do.”

“I’m literally offering to help.”

“Which I am  _ not  _ asking for, Nii-san. ”

It feels like his big bro is actually trying to be helpful - or he’s bored and just wants to hang out (which, to be clear, he is normally all for because he loves his brother to death and doesn’t get to see him as much as he used to now with college). It’s just that Kouki really wants to make a 50% scoring percentage on the easiest and closest shots in the next two weeks and that’s not going to happen by osmosis. Or with a sparkly-eyed big brother who loves to watch basketball but maybe has never actually played the game.

“Because I'm starting out at layups and perimeter shots,” he begins explaining because he might as well take help where it is offered, “how I get better is by practicing  _ by yourself _ making shots. Since it’s about becoming more accurate, I have to start shooting from close and then back out. Get it?”

Kyo nods and motions that he continue.

“Okay, so if you want to help, you can catch my rebounds or shots?”

“I can do that, Otōto.”

And he does. For the next two hours or so, Kyo sticks with him - shot after shot after shot - catching the rebounds when he can and encouraging him the whole time. 

. . . 

No one on the team talks about the fact that Kagami is a Miracle. It was the elephant in the room when school started and everyone was moving carefully around him and now it’s just an accepted thing that they do not need to discuss. Kagami’s big and focused and really putting everything he is into leveling up his already amazing skill at basketball. Kagami’s intense about penmanship, stupidly into keychains like he’s never owned enough of them, and a good (if quiet) friend off it. He’s theirs, basically. The team will never bring it up first and honestly, he’s pretty sure to a man they’d pretend otherwise if outsiders asked them upfront about Kagami.

He’s a teammate now. Full stop.

. . . 

The closer they get to InterHigh the more articles appear online about  _ Itsutsu no ōkan _ . The elephant in the room is now Kiyoshi Teppei and the fact that  _ none _ of their senpais have so much as breathed his name around them. There’s something wrong, there - and Monday after practice, he and the rest of the First Years find themselves talking about it more and more when they’re alone.

“What do you guys think it is? It’s like he’s  _ persona non grata _ or something.”

“Which is nuts,” interjects Yo, “because the journalists are just spitting out old content. Are we supposed to pretend we don’t know he exists or what?”

“Or like he’s really sick,” muses Kōsei-kun. “Maybe?

Because it’s nothing short of intentional. Seirin as a team is like a group of cousins and friends. They hang out after practice and they have a group chat where they post memes and jokes or ask basketball questions. Even Coach loosens up in group chat since she misses a lot of their post-practice chats to head home to either build them  _ more  _ grueling training or to help her dad with a private client occasionally. The First Years are even making plans to start having lunch the week InterHigh starts to maximize together time. They are basically a tiny functioning family so there’s no way that the person who started this team - this culture, probably - hasn’t come up offhand without some tacit agreement by all their Senpais that they wouldn’t.

“I think he’s in recovery.” Kagami closes his locker door and sits on one of the benches to lace up his sneakers. “He has to be. They don’t look sad about it or anything.” 

“True. But they don’t look  _ anything _ about it because it doesn’t come up, dude.”

“Ma, ma - it could be anything. But he’s not even enrolled in our school in-person, is he? Otherwise, reporters would be on the grounds all the freaking time, based on how they’re hounding the rest of the Kings for interviews.”

Okay, that’s-

-pretty damning. 

“He’s gotta be in the hospital. That’s more proof.”

They all put their stuff on in thoughtful silence, and it hangs over his head all the rest of the way home.

. . . 

Kuroko-kun remains a mystery. He’s abnormally blank - not as a blank slate but like the black screen of a computer that’s gone dark in the middle of use. Or like the glassiness of a still remote lake. There’s not a real ripple on the surface 99% of the time. It doesn’t mean nothing touches him - it only means he doesn’t react in a way that they can see. Which also makes it hard to gauge how he feels about anything.

He and Fuku begin to figure out that some people  _ can _ see Kuroko but it’s like they forget he exists almost as soon as they notice him. The one time that someone happens to come up to the fourth building roof where they usually eat lunch, she makes eye contact with himself and Fu to apologize but doesn’t seem to know that Kuroko is there. Even Kōki sometimes has to focus really hard on seeing Kuroko-kun before he does. 

“Are we allowed to say hello in class or would you prefer we not?” Fuku looks over his bento at Kuroko, the next day at lunch. “Like we generally talk during breaks and stuff. Whatever you want, that’s what we’ll do.”

The two of them have talked about not asking Kuroko anything because they don’t want to interrogate him. That’s not what this is. And Kōki has stuck to his guns about not going out of his way to look for any information on the Miracles for the last few years - as the origin of his anxiety, he has absolutely no reason to do so and won’t. So either Kuroko feels comfortable enough one day to share how his powers work or he doesn’t. It doesn’t matter right now to either of them. 

Not as they look across to see him carefully reach for the onigiri that they now all buy together to share.

“You can always say hello. I don’t mind.” 

. . . 

“Are you coming out to eat?” It takes serious effort to move his head from where he’s sprawled face-down on his bed spot his dad grinning at them from the doorway. Who sounds like that  _ especially  _ because Kōki’s told him Coach would know immediately if they deviated from the plan. And not eating is deviating. 

Ugh.

Tou-san comes in and drops down next to him on the bed, ruffling his hair before leaving his hand there which is kind of restrained for him as the more tactile parent.

“You called Himawari-chan yet?”

“No.” 

“Tired?”

“Exhausted.”

“Yeah, you’ve been working really hard at this. It’s like I now have four athletic children in my house when I could have always counted on just the three.”

“Tou-san!” He knows he’s whining because his dad immediately cackles at his expense.

“Sorry. It’s not a criticism! I just used to have you with me all the time and now I don’t. I’m glad you decided to try out.” His dad continues to pet his head before sounding more put-upon than he has any right to. “Weirdly, I feel like you’re my last kid to grow up and grow out of the house.”

“That’s dramatic.”

“That’s the  _ least _ dramatic thing I’ve ever said, son.” 

He’s been born into a family of comedians, for no other reason than to vex him when he’s exhausted. 

“And everyone under the age of twenty-five in this house is my precious baby, no matter what you all say. Anyway, do we get to come to your first game next weekend? Unless you’re feeling shy.”

Yeah, he is. It’s dumb because his family loves him to hell and back. It’s just that basketball is the first thing he’s ever cultivated outside of the house, away from his siblings and parents. The first brand new thing he’s done - even if it was Fu’s prodding - that’s been for him in years. He cracks his eyes open and looks up at his dad, familiar horn-rimmed glasses and grey hair that Sumi rags on him about and laugh lines in his face. Not offended, either way, just ready to support or fall back depending on what Kōki says.

“Of course, I want you to come.” He means that. “It’s just that it’s the first game of what will probably be many if Seirin gets as far as it did last year, so maybe choose later ones. It’ll be a bigger crowd and more seating and stuff.”

“Okay.”

“Okay?” he tests.

“I’ll talk the rest of them out of coming to this first one but only so we can plan for the next few ones.” His father ruffles his hair again. “You should be proud of yourself, Kōki.”

“I am. Are you?” he asks.

He gets dragged into one of his father's pretty awesomely comforting hugs. 

“I am," Tou-san says into his hair, "always.”

. . . 

“Alright, show us what you’ve got Kōki.”

Nervousness swamps him for a long heated minute while he gets his bearings in front of the team. It’s Wednesday. It’s a week before their first game with Shinkyō and rumors are that there’s a player on their team who’s Senegalese and taller than Kagami and Mitobi-senpai. He’s been practicing like a mad man almost every day since before Kaijo because Coach had sat him down when he’d first made the team to bang into his head that the fundamentals come down to his body’s capabilities. She hadn’t flat out told him he was weak but she’d told him that his base was nonexistent. That he had good hand-eye coordination and a lot of heart and that she’d picked him because she thought he would work harder than almost all the other First Years minus Kagami if she gave him a route to follow.

Yeah, he’s a hard worker but moreover, she’d given him the plan. Four weeks into plyometrics and weight training, to reaction And the team had made it clear that he belonged. And now he’s invested in becoming the best player he can be, even in the off-season. Not like he’s going to college on basketball or anything but, like, he made a team that he didn’t know was started by a legend and he should really work hard to deserve to stay. So...that’s what he’s doing. What he’s been doing for nearly six weeks - plyometrics, tweaked nutrition, weight training, and form shooting for an hour and a half after practice 4x a week.

He’s stronger. He doesn’t tire anywhere near as quickly. His hand-eye coordination is getting better. And, still startling even though Coach had said this would happen, he’s a little bit faster. 

Now, he’s practicing form shooting in front of the rest of the team because Coach has decided to use each day this week to call out different players in the last ten minutes of practice to show off what they’ve been working on. Fuku’d gotten Mitobi-senpai up to help him display footwork and Hyuuga-senpai had landed 12 of 20 three-point shots in his.

“Hey,” Coach says in a voice not loud enough for those to hear, “you need confidence. Do it in front of the team. I’ll be on ball duty.”

“You got this!”

“Sink ‘em, Kōki-kun!”

Even though he’s still nervous as hell, it’s just the team. It’s  _ just _ his team. It’s not any different from practice. He can do this. Everything recedes like it does when he’s alone and focuses on how his body feels and how to move. 

Three single-arm shots from the sides and the front of the basket - all in. Three single-arm shots with guide hands, same positions - all in. He backs up to the wing - this is where his percentages start fluctuating - and decides on ten from there, ten from the elbow, and then ten each from the same positions on the other side. He misses three on the left, half from the elbow on the right, two each from the right-wing and elbow. His head is full, eyes focused -  _ straighten your spine, you can make these shots,  _ he’s thinking - and he works his way through it again and doesn’t mind when he only does slightly better. 

He glances at Coach - she’s not stopping him - so he steps back outside of the three-point line. He’s only started attempting these last week and out of 100 shots, he’s gotten 9. But there’s nothing in his field of focus but the net, no sound, no movement, nothing. 

He misses the first. And the second. And the third. The fourth skirts around the rim before falling outside of the hoop. Coach tosses it back to him and he can see from her face that he’s down to the last few seconds of his time. 

_ Breathe _ .

He breathes. Sits his weight a little lower in his hips, the way he’s seen Senpai do a few times in practice, and lifts his gaze and pushes off from the floor. His right wrist pivots forward and his left hand guides. It feels like breathing.

He makes the shot, just as Coach blows her whistle to signal time - and sound floods back in just in time to hear the rest of the team cheering from the sidelines.

. . . 

Papa Mbaye is bigger than Kagami, which is saying something, with a reach that gives the Second Years a bit of trouble from the start. They’re up during the first quarter and don’t seem too worried though Kagami remains subbed in to compensate for it. The other team’s entire strategy is built around their foreign ace, letting him do as he wishes and building up a little momentum in support.

There are a few times where he’s on the edge of his seat but mostly, he’s confident that they’ll win.

And they do.

. . . 

He and his siblings are laying around the living room the next day, lazy and full after an afternoon of bullying Kōki into a celebratory hangout (“This is your first ever win! And you didn’t even let us come!”) that had meant walking and eating all over downtown Tokyo and watching reruns of childhood cartoons. The carpet is worn, the pillow below his head comfortable, and the ceiling is familiar above him. Somewhere to Kōki’s left, Kyo’s been quiet for the last ten minutes which means he’s more than likely already asleep and drooling on the carpet. Kaori’s also quiet somewhere across from him and Sumi’s sitting up with a back to the couch and eyes on her phone when she makes a curious noise.

He turns his head to look at her but she’s squinting to where their sister should be sitting in an armchair.

“Kaori, what is that on your foot?”

“What is  _ what _ on my foot?”

“There’s a dark mark on your instep.”

Kōki’s big brother senses tingle to life - if she’s been walking around all afternoon with a bruise from ballet then she really should ice it - and he struggles up into a sitting position. Sumi’s already abandoned her spot to crawl closer to her twin in fascination.

“Oh my-”

It’s not a bruise, it’s a shape. It’s a-

“Skin distinction?” Kaori says slowly. The three of them look up from her foot to stare at each other in confusion. The owner of said mark looks  _ especially _ perplexed. 

“But,” he says dumbly, “do they usually appear this late?”

They huddle around Sumi who’s already on the search engine and scrolling through articles and posts. 

“Skin distinction occurs in 25% of the global population of humanity at birth,” Kaori reads over her shoulder, “and appears at the rate of 15% within the Japanese population. Of those of Japanese descent who live with a skin distinction, only 5% of them are categorized as late-onset - appearing after birth anytime between the ages of 8 and 45.”

“Mom was born with hers, right?” he throws out absently, skimming the rest of the research article. “But also isn’t this kind of a moot point since you started talking to your soul mate four months ago.”

“Huh,” says Kaori with her eyebrows raised. “Weird. It definitely wasn’t there yesterday.”

“Ask them if they’ve got one too.”

“Guess I’m the first to discover it.” Kaori’s soulmate texts her all the time through CuChat since that fateful afternoon where Kōki had encouraged her to break the official rules and initiate contact. No way they wouldn’t have said anything first. “What do y’all think it is?”

“Mm, it looks like it’s still forming?"

“Maybe you’ll get a turtle rabbit creature,” Sumi says with a giant smirk and, as if on cue, Kyo lets out an especially loud snore somewhere behind her. The snore, combined with the memory of  _ that _ particular morning, sets them all off - collapsing into laughter for a long long while.

. . .

For the next few weeks, life falls into a steady blur. Early morning runs before school, classes and exams, talking to the rest of the First Years about literature. Lunch with his teammates or with Fuku and Kuroko, group chat memes and quick videos of basketball, and sticking to his meal plan with the help of his family. Yo and Kōsei begin making concerted efforts to befriend Kagami that works, soon the whole First Year squad are hanging out on weekends. In between their first and second preliminary game, Kaa-san against a-san goes off to a national architecture conference at some point and he, his siblings, and the Fukudas go to Kaori at her first ballet recital. He gets to play against Jitsuzen in the second and third quarter, scores 8 points and lands three assists, and rides the high for a few days.

Fu is amazing to watch, really growing into himself on the court. He’s super proud of his best friend, sitting there and watching him go head-to-head with Kinga’s offense time and time again and coming out on top at least half the time.

“We’re getting better.” he grins at him after the game.

“Dude, we really  _ are _ .” They sit around grinning at each other like a couple of idiots after Kinga before they head to the bus.

He gets dragged into a streetball game with Yo, who now that Koki knows him a lot better, is an  _ actual _ menace underneath the superficial politeness who cannot walk away from a challenge. It’s his first time playing this kind of basketball and it’s not his best showing but after 3 quick games but it’s still fun in between a lot of bowing and apologizing to strangers so Yo’s shit-talking doesn’t get them all beat up, he can see why Kagami loves this version of the game. 

Kyo brings his soulmate home for the second time since they made it official through the registry and it’s a nice extended dinner where his brother can’t stop smiling and Kōki’s future sister-in-law entertains them with stories of her life as a budding schoolteacher. Coach tweaks his regimen and his nutrition recommendations and he starts getting used to making half his meals. He heads into the local sports store for protein powder because it’s going into literally  _ every  _ liquid he drinks and they start recognizing him on sight. 

“Look at you,” his mother teases after they leave the store, when his phone rings again, “making  _ friends _ outside of Fu and recognized by strangers!”

“Kaa-san,” he sighs, giving her a look when she just laughs.

It’s true. He was never outgoing to begin with. He’s not a shy person, per se, and he’s not reserved but he’d always been content to just watch other people. Fuku (and Hima-chan, since they still keep in touch) had been outgoing and fun and had pushed their ways into his life as a kid and stayed. Left to his own devices, he’s happy to just have one or two really good friends outside of his family. And now he has a whole team of people who tease him and teach him and text him in the middle of dinner - all in the space of two months. 

It’s kind of crazy when he thinks about it. And it’s kind of nice, too.

. . . 

The day after Seirin crushes Meijō 108 to 41, two articles hit the press within an hour of each other.

The first is coverage of all the teams competing in the prelims to play in the InterHigh - there’s a particularly good photo of the team laughing on the bench and a paragraph in there about “Seirin’s strong performance” and an expectation that the team founded by a Crown will continue to perform even while Teppei Kiyoshi continues to remain missing. The bigger group chat is weirdly weighted once Kōsei shares the article. The First Years flock to their smaller group.

> **_yo-yo <Sunday, 10:17am>_ ** **  
> ** Kōsei, glad you dropped that in their bc if you hadn't, i would have
> 
> **_Me <Sunday, 10:19am>_ ** **  
> ** They’re going to keep on not saying anything.
> 
> **_Fu <Sunday, 10:19am>_ ** **  
> ** it’s been two hours - and we are never this quiet on Sundays
> 
> **_Tsuburaba <Sunday, 10:20am>_ ** **  
> ** had to do it 
> 
> **_Kagami Taiga <Sunday, 10:21am>_ ** **  
> ** honestly, kiyoshi is the whole reason I joined Seirin    
>  if he’s not...dead...and he’s not here, then where the fuck is he?
> 
> **_Tsubaraba <Sunday, 10:22am>_ ** **  
> ** it’s gonna be awkward unless they address it but...

Kagami’s right, unfortunately - other than Coach congratulating them all on making it into the paper and the Second Years sending emojis, the elephant remains in the middle of the room. It’s maddening and baffling and he and the rest of his year can’t let it go in their own mini-chat.

The second article is only live for four minutes and thirty-five seconds on the website of a little-known college student-run collective. It’s an expose of sorts, with an unconfirmed list of thirty students across the country who’d started at the schools identified to be hosting the Miracle children this year. It gets ten hits from ten unique IPs before all traces of the article are scrubbed from the internet and the email itself poses an error when searched for. Every email that includes drafts of the piece disappears just as quickly and half the student writers find that their computers go down with viruses within forty minutes of the website being scrubbed.

Kōki, like all but three individuals in the world, doesn’t see this second article. He doesn’t find out about the article - not until it’s much too late.

. . . 

“Want to come over Sunday?” Fu is, as always, the first to push past boundaries with new people - makes total sense that he thinks of inviting Kuroko over to play games. It’s their usual shortcut back to class from the rooftop, where most people aren’t. “I promise it’ll be worth your while!”

“Sure,” Kuroko says, blank as usual but not missing a beat. “Which games?”

Kōki can’t make it because Kaori has another dance recital but he’s super glad that they’re hanging out nonetheless. And it’s not like he and Fuku are  _ always _ attached at the hip, no matter what their families say. 

“Well-”

“Hey,” calls out a familiar voice from behind them. They all turn in tandem to see Kagami, hair glinting in the sun, looking surprised to see them. There’s a moment where he and Fuku glance at each other, brows up and eyes wide because in the weeks of using this hallway and timing it so that they’re  _ almost _ late, they’ve bumped into no one. But then they remember he’s a Miracle too and the panic eases. Up until-

“Who’s this?”

Kōki blinks. Rapidly.

“What?”

Kōki turns to look at Kuroko, whose facial expression has not shifted but who seems to be holding more still than usual. Whose blue eyes are trained on Kagami’s dark brown ones like he’s examining their teammate closely. When he looks over Kuroko’s head, Fuku looks just as shocked.

“Guys?” Kagami says again, looking unimpressed before nodding down at Kuroko. “Okay, I guess they’re going to stand there. I’m Kagami Taiga, First Year in 1-C.”

“You guys don’t  _ know _ each other?” It slips out before he can really control himself. Kagami looks confused. Kuroko doesn’t look like anything at all.

“No,” Kagami says looking confused before lifting his chin, “but I’ve seen you around. You go to McDonald's on Fifth after school sometimes, right?”

“I do,” Kuroko says normally, after a beat of silence that Koki knows was not intentional (and that’s really telling), “they have good vanilla milkshakes.”

“They’re the closest I’ve come to finding ones that taste the same vanilla-like takes back in the States.”

“Does that mean you enjoy it or that you do not?”

_ Dude,  _ he mouths.

_ What the fuck,  _ Fuku mouths back.

Kagami says something or other in response but Kōki’s just staring again. If there’s anything he’s learned about his fellow First Year it’s that Kagami Taiga is a terrible awkward liar. He doesn’t see the point in lying so he doesn’t try - he simply ignores anything he doesn’t want to talk about. So, obviously, he’s  _ not _ a Miracle because he wouldn’t bother pretending he’s never met Kuroko if he has.

_ Oh, wow. _

The bell to indicate the beginning of class rings before Kōki can do anything with that revelation. 

. . . 

When Koki thinks about it as they’re changing for practice that same afternoon, what’s probably most impressive about this whole thing is that Kagami, who most of the school still thinks is a Miracle, either has always been a lone wolf (okay, this is probably true) and hasn’t thought anything of most of his peers and upperclassmen giving him a wide berth or has cottoned on to the rumors himself and doesn’t mind. 

He looks up from tying his shoelaces, sees Koganei-senpai say something to the redhead that makes him go red before he gets up to sputter something about ‘I would never!’ as he chases the upperclassmen around the locker room.

_ Or maybe we’re all he needs.  _

It’s a weird thought to have but he doesn’t mean it possessively. More like Kagami is a basketball nut on a team that started two months ago when school started, a team that is getting closer and closer because they’re spending most of their time together. A team that’s solid because the Second Years are clearly best friends who respect each other, lead from the front, and are actively grooming their newest members into building connections within their year and with them too.

Maybe, just maybe, Kagami is like him. And this club, which is more than a club to them now, is enough.

. . . 

“You thought that Kagami Taiga was a Miracle.”

It’s the first thing Kuroko says to him the next morning when he stops by to stash his bookbag before heading to the gym for his customary quick practice - this time with Mitobe-senpai for footwork. Kuroko is not always early for school and so far Koki hasn’t really figured out what the pattern is for which days he runs into the guy ahead of practice but he is today. 

“Yeah.” Kuroko doesn’t say anything else, doesn’t ask why. He’s got ears - no doubt he knows why. “It didn’t matter then and doesn’t matter to us now.”

“Your basketball club?”

“Yeah,” he shrugs. “Everyone’s heard the rumors, of course, maybe even Kagami himself - and we’ve never actually talked about this as a team but it’s probably  _ because _ we all thought he was a Miracle. He’s human. He’s awkward sometimes and he’s obsessed with basketball and he’s a good guy.”

Kuroko nods like Kōki has answered a question that wasn’t asked. He glances at his watch, immediately sits his backpack in his seat, and makes a beeline for the door.

“I’ve got to get to the gym,” he says regretfully, “talk later?”

“Yes. Have a good practice.”

It’s unusually grueling - nailing the basics is as energy-consuming as it is time-consuming - and he barely makes it back to class on time for another long morning of classes. By lunch, he’s at least had the chance to text Fu that he and Kuroko sort of talked earlier before they head up to the roof.

“You and Fu have been very careful about avoiding difficult topics,” he starts, once they’re through splitting food, “about not asking questions that you think will make me uncomfortable or bringing up things that directly tie to being a Miracle.”

He’s sitting in his usual cross-legged stance, still except for his hands which hold his bento and his eyes which are clear and straightforward, and swing from Kōki to Fuku in turn.

“I think humans, at their core, have the capacity for good. That you just need opportunities to keep choosing to do good. My remaining siblings disagree but this year is going to prove or disprove that one way or another.” It’s a good thing that the guy goes quiet when he does because Koki is reeling. 

_ Jesus.  _

Such careful phrasing, so intentional. There’s a world of horror behind the words ‘remaining siblings’. There’s also something behind the slip-up of humanity as ‘you’ before ‘we’.

Kuroko continues. “At Teiko, we - my siblings and I - were told from the beginning that we were different. Monsters with powers that would help humanity, not miracles. That the proof was in none of us having been born with soulbond distinctions because our powers meant we were not entirely human. And that we had to use those powers to help, even if we didn’t want to. Even if using them hurt us.”

“You’re human.” Fuku’s voice is strained, and it’s only because he knows him so well that he can tell the roughness is from trying not to be angry and trying to mask his empathy. “You are as human as any of us, Kuroko.”

“I know.”

For the next few minutes, they eat in silence while Kōki’s insides tear themselves up. He’s trying to find the words to say to...fuck, he doesn’t know. It’s not like he can make the past better for Kuroko or any of the other Miracles. Not like there’s any word in the Japanese language that can make it clear how much he commiserates. But he can try.

“The summer after we all found out about you all,” he says in the calmest voice he can muster while unveiling his own vulnerability, “I developed pretty severe anxiety. Looking back on it now, I can see how it formed. I didn’t leave the house that entire summer - I stayed home, I read, I called Fuku and our other friend Himawari-chan, I hung out with my siblings, I ignored the news - but I didn’t leave home. So when schools opened back up again and it was time to take that first step outside our front door, I just...couldn’t.”

His next breath is super deep, his gaze angled up at the sky above them. It’s easier to speak about it when he’s not looking at them. Even though Fuku is his best buddy on earth and knows all of this, it’s still easier to remember it’s nothing to be ashamed of when he’s not looking. 

“At first, we thought it was a fluke. But it happened again. Multiple times. Every single time I tried to leave our house, the world would multiply into something big and terrible and I froze again and again.”

“Was it us? The news that we existed?”

He drops his chin down to meet Kuroko's gaze head-on. Because while the question is careful, there's  _ something _ in the way the guy asks it. Guilt, maybe. Or regret. And Kōki’s not having that, not when he's spent years digging into why it had hit him so hard.

“It was the news that hundreds of adults willing to torture other people existed -  _ that’s _ what triggered it.”

He waits for Kuroko to indicate that he’s really listening, that he’s hearing what Kōki is saying but all he gets is that straightforward gaze. So he makes it as plain as possible.

“You are human, Kuroko. Fuku and I know and believe that. And you’ll meet way more people in your life who know and believe it too. Besides, how do you know they weren’t lying to you all?”

“They very well might have been,” Kuroko allows. “If you hear something often enough, you begin to believe that it’s true.”

“Not having a soulbond distinction doesn’t mean a thing,” Fuku says quietly, “since nearly 6% of the world isn’t born with one and of that group more than half develop a distinction later in life. Having a soul bond isn’t inherent to being human. Being human is inherent to being human.”

Another bit of silence where Kuroko looks between the two of them. “I possess a kind of invisibility. Although it is more accurate to call it ‘Misdirection’, really, as I can divert attention away from myself. That is a bit more than the average human, as we all know.”

“It just means you come with a little bit more flavor than some of us,” Fuku says kindly. “It makes it tricky for you - and of course it came about because of all the...awful...things you’ve been through but it doesn’t take away from the base foundation of human-ness.”

“No,” Kuroko says quietly, thoughtfully. “I don’t think it does either.”

**Author's Note:**

> the plot bunny frantically hopping around my head wouldn't be denied.  
> inspired by umisabaku and the "Designation: Miracles" world they built - some elements borrowed and tweaked.  
> this won't be as long as my other fics.


End file.
